Fortified category hails “Blitz spirit”

Producers spoke of a “Blitz spirit” among the fortified wine trade as the industry came together for the Big Fortified Tasting in London this week.

Glaziers Hall in London Bridge was packed out for the event on Monday, 19 April, with the overriding message from producers being how encouraging it was to see the industry pulling together to try to elevate fortified wines back to the forefront of the UK drinks market.

“The UK Sherry trade is currently dominated by just a couple of brands, which holds it back from development quite a bit,” Graham Wilson of Gonzalez Byass told the drinks business.

“It’s a great product with strong provenance, but sadly most people don’t understand the history of the drink. It’s up to us as producers to push that message.

“It’s like the spirit of the Blitz in that we are all trying to raise the profile of the category together. We all have different amounts of money behind us but everyone is trying to do their bit.”

The biggest challenge facing the fortified category lies in attracting younger drinkers, who more commonly associate Sherry with their grandmother and Port with their grandfather.

Some brands, such as Warre’s Otima 10 Year Old Tawny are attempting to do this through brighter, more attention-grabbing packaging such as a bright neon blue box, but it is accepted there is a long way to go to get younger people thinking of fortified as a regular drinking option.

Altering this older generation perception is essential if fortified wines are to regain their popularity within the UK market, according to Adrian Bingham of the Oxford and Cambridge Club Wine Committee.

“These people know what they are doing, and they don’t follow trends,” he said of the producers on show. “The million-dollar question is how we can make fortified accessible for younger drinkers. They need to create a whole new image for the category.”

Another school of thought circulating the room was that, much like fashion, trends in drinks are fairly cyclical and fortified’s time will come around again in due course.

James Forbes, of Sandeman Port distributor Stevens Garnier, told db: “People are drinking different stuff than they were 20 years ago, but then people are wearing different clothes to what they wore 20 years ago as well. Fashions come back in time and Port and Sherry will come back into vogue in time, of that I am certain.”

Other news to come out of the event, which was sponsored by the Madeira Institute, The Sherry Institute of Spain and the Port Wine Institute, involved the renaming of Australian Tokay. The drink has been at the centre of a dispute with Hungarian region Tokaj over the 2007 ruling that only authorised wine producers from Tokaj may use the Tokaji name on their wines.

To counter this, is seems likely that Australian Tokay is to be renamed “Topake” in an effort to build a clear differentiation between the two regions, despite the similar style of wines.

Alan Lodge, 21.04.2010