Jun 16 2009
Cheap quality wine
Wine can be incredibly expensive in the UK, with tax and import charges making up to 75% of the price bottle of wine! Furthermore, with no real UK wine industry, the UK has to rely on importing most of it’s wine. Originally from western Europe such as Italy and France, later the new world of wines from California, Australia and South Africa became huge sellers in the UK, however as demand rose, so did prices, so where can the UK Consumer go to get great wines at reasonable prices.
Two countries have emerged with new wines, for all markets, that are great quality and remarkably cheap – Argentina and New Zealand.
Argentina Wines
A relatively newcomer to the world of wines, Argentina is the biggest producer of wine outside of Europe, and up until relatively recently 90% of all the wines produced were drunk in the country. However, the political climate of the country changed, Argentina emerged from a a dictatorship and under a huge economic cloud. Suddenly, to get money, they had to sell commodities abroad. One such commodity was wine.
As such, the wine industry contributes nearly US$500 million per annum to the economy, and conditions are incredibly good for Argentine wine. The temperature is hot, the altitude is high and rocky and there’s no humidity. This means that whilst grapes can be grown, pests and fungi struggle. As such, Argentine wines are often labeled as organic, as it’s relatively easy to not use chemicals and pesticides.
Traditionally, red wines are more popular in Argentina. The most critically and commercially successful is the Argentine Malbec, produced in the Mendoza region of Buenos Aires.
New Zealand Wine
Whilst Argentine wines did have a long pedigree before launching, New Zealand Wines relatively speaking didn’t. However, like Argentine wines, New Zealand wines also became popular after politics crippled the economy. The UK was New Zealand’s biggest importer, but when they joined the EEC (European Economic Community), they had to close off all the favorable trad links between the two countries. Almost overnight, New Zealand went from a producer of meat and dairy products, to a producer of wine, and it was a lot more profitable.
However, to begin with, wine growing in New Zealand was tricky, and this lead to a lot of poor quality wines. However the Marlborough region (not originally considered for wine growing) put New Zealand on the map with it’s excellent Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, the Sauvignon Blanc grape adoring the cooler climates of Marlborough. Critics have since voted the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc as the best of it’s type in the world.