Give Spain a chance

Though on the face of it the competition looks equal, you know that the winners will be the ones who have stumped up enough cash to bribe the judging panel

IF MEMORY serves me right, I left slightly hurriedly last month bleating about getting a plane to Spain. I’m sure you are all delighted to learn that we managed to catch it and yes we did have a fine holiday. Apart from one night that is.

At around 4am we were awoken by the village dogs 300 or so feet below us, howling and barking.  This was followed a few minutes later by the sound of heavy breathing outside the window.

We never did find out what it was. In my dazed state this struck me as a fitting metaphor for the situation facing Spanish wine in the UK.  There it is, stuck in the outer darkness, puffing and blowing a little after all the effort that it’s taken to get up the quality hill, trying to get in. Trouble is, no one is going to open the door.

The absurdity of this is that the quality is there.  This might not have been a working holiday, but it did involve necessary (and frequent) trips to wine shops and supermarkets to stock up on liquid. What we bought reinforced my feelings after agency tastings in the UK.

The manzanilla was fresh, whites had character (Santiago Ruiz’s O Rosal a standout) the rosados were crisp but with punchy fruit and the reds (from Navarra, Utiel Requena and Rioja) were filled with fruit and had real personality.

And, astoundingly, not one faulty bottle in two weeks – which experience has shown wouldn’t have been the case if we’d bought the same number of wines at the same price points in France.

Here were clean, wellmade, modern but identifiably Spanish wines at tempting prices. Why, then, is Spain so woefully underrepresented in the UK? The Oddbins’ list has been a disgrace for years; Majestic pays the country no more than lip service; the supermarkets deem that all is needed is a token smattering of generic names, while let’s not even bother with First Quench.

It would be wrong to think that this issue was front of mind for the two weeks.  Lighting the barbecue and trying to stop my daughter eating ants was of more immediate concern, but it returned one night when we were watching a beauty contest on TV.

Hey, the satellite could only pick up German TV stations, all the cds had been played and the interminable Miss Frigiliana pageant was weirdly compelling.  Not as entertaining as the Miss Guyana contest I caught earlier in the year which ended in a mass brawl when the "wrong" contestant won.

This was more akin to the Craggy Island Lovely Girls competition on Father Ted.  ("What a lovely bottom.  I shouldn’t say that? Sorr y. They’ve ALL got lovely bottoms.") but with added flamenco. It’s the same with wine.

All the contestants/countries are lined up in front of the judges/buyers (consumers don’t get a look in) but though on the face of it the competition looks equal, you know that the winners will be the ones who have managed to stump up enough cash to bribe the judging panel. (I could have put that more crudely, but we do have some standards.)

That’s why poor Miss Spain isn’t given the nod.  Fact is, with the bulk of the wines in the UK being bought "on promotion" the major chains simply won’t buy anything without a sweetener being thrown in.

It’s what we in the real world would call a backhander, or a bribe.  Then the chain pockets the cash and tells the consumer it’s being really generous by taking money off.  Quite how this makes sound business sense for suppliers is beyond me.

"At certain price levels Spain has really got its act together, but it simply isn’t fashionable," says Moreno Wines’ Carlos Ried with a slightly bewildered resignation, though he knows fine well why the wines aren’t being stocked.

"Our various projects, including single varietals from Campo de Borja at the £4 mark, which were aimed at the UK are more successful in Europe than they are here because there’s no promotional strings attached."

Why has South African wine suddenly become so desirable? It’s nothing to do with wine quality (excellent though that is).  It’s to do with the parlous state of the rand and the willingness of South Africa producers to play the promotional game.

Australia is being bled dry, Argentina iswaiting to be plundered.  As long as this corrupt way of doing business continues the potential beauty queen will be left, panting, outside.