In general, I think the natural wine scene draws considerable interest from winos in France, with a bunch of names that have become really cult-ish and still barely known in the US or looked at with incomprehension:
l’Anglore
Prieure Roch
Beauger
Bouju
Richard Leroy
Bernaudeau
Lenoir
Schueller
Gramenon
Metras (old cuvees of Ultime go for big prices at auction)
Overnoy (his vin jaune goes for eur1,000+ at auction now, his other wines for 300+)
Le Puy
Ganevat
Murmures
Mirroirs
Grande Colline
Old Lapierre
De Moor
…
Same happened to me… I have a cellar full of the big names in Burgundy and elsewhere and yet end up focusing most of my drinking/buying on natural wines those days.
ITB, and importing Prieure Roch and a bit of Anglore
Conceptually, there are tons of producers, and categories, of wines in Europe that have little to no export outside of their areas. Every coastal town in Italy has some local white wines they make (often quite good, usually a great complement to the local seafood there), but which you’ll mostly only find right there.
I guess I wouldn’t characterize those wines as being “unpopular” in the US, because it’s not as though a bunch of that was exported to the US but consumers didn’t like them and they languished on the shelves. You don’t even find them in other parts of Italy, much less around Europe, much less in the USA.
Something like Sherry is probably a better answer. I’m guessing most Americans probably just flat out won’t like that stuff. Dolcetto might be another good answer. Maybe Rhone whites?
i feel there are more wines which are popular in the US yet have little traction in the country they are made. take a look at the threads for burgundy producers on the la passion du vin forum and it is interesting to see some of the producers that barely garner any attention there yet are really pushed hard by merchants as well as public wine personalities in the states.
In the 70s we sold lots of German wines, Ports, sherries, and Sauternes. Now Sherry needs a ventilator and the others aren’t doing so well either.
The vineyards for sherry are 25% of what they were 40 years ago, I have read. For many years there was a question on the Master of Wine exam that read ‘’‘you are the marketing director for a Spanish sherry company…sales in the toilet…wtf are you going to do??’’ One of the examiners was …you guessed it…managing director of a sherry firm… I am paraphrasing Jasper Morris here so if the details are wrong, call him…he is self quarantined and probably would welcome the call.
In the 70s not only did we have customers with standing orders for a monthly case of La Ina etc but people bought “California sherry”…Almaden discovered the secret of flor yeast just as people lost their interest in the stuff.
In Paris, if you order basic wine by the glass, it’s inevitably cheap red Bordeaux and cheap Loire white. Anywhere else in France outside of winegrowing regions, it’s cheap Cotes du Rhone for red and cheap Alsace for white. You want the poster child for wines popular in Europe but not in the U.S., it’s Alsace.
As pointed out, Sherry isn’t popular anywhere but Spain, and it’s not popular there.
The world’s biggest market for Port is France! Cheap, nasty Ruby is wildly popular as an aperitif.
Yes, central Europe and Greece do far better in Europe than in the U.S., which is too bad as a lot of good wine doesn’t make it here.
Yes, how weird is it that 90% of the American wine consumed by Americans outside of California comes from California… it might just possibly have something to do with the fact that about 90% of the wine produced in America comes from California ?
How about Savennieres? Yeah, a few geeks like them, but lots of wine lovers don’t know the wines and think it’s made from Sauvignon Blanc. It is, to my palate, one of the most (if not THE most) distinctive wines on the planet.
A few centuries ago I was driving from our Virginia home to our rented vacation cabin in Maine. IIRC this was c1980. I brought a little wine in the car, but not enough, especially as we learned we would have plenty of guests. Stopped at a gourmet shop in Wiscasset named ‘Treats’ (it’s still there, 100 yards and other side of the street from World Infamous Red’s Eats). I bought a bottle of 1971 Savennieres, IIRC, Baumard ‘Papillon’. Again, IIRC, nine bucks, which was a lot at that time. Drank it with the mussels we did not die from eating (another story). Next day I drove 20 miles back to Wiscasset, bought the remaining 10 bottles. Really great wine!
In 1977 I visited the Baumards. At the restaurant Jean Baumard ordered a bottle of Savennieres. We were informed that the vineyard in question had been ripped out and sold to housing developers. He said that because the land had to lie fallow between plantings for so long there was not much profit to be made.
I now see that K and L lists about 20 Savennieres – if you include out of stock items— but only one in actual stock.I m not sure what they mean by this. Is it not possible to order more or are they waiting for better times??
I use that feature a lot. Often to recall their notes on something I bought, but they’ve since sold out of. Other times when looking for or researching a wine. Not sure that it means more than they don’t have a shortage of memory and that it’s easier to keep all that info in their database, a toggle tap away, in case they restock that wine, and easier for them to input a subsequent vintage. As a customer, you can see by vintage if they’ve carried it recently. You can click for an alert if the wine comes into stock again.
We had an Italian wine importer come by (after sales calls) for a visit on a press day. Tasted through her lineup between press loads, then she tasted a bunch of ours with dinner. She represents small producers from quite a few regions, making mostly uncommon varieties. One of the things she talked about was which wines were only consumed in their region, which were broadly consumed, and which were mostly exported.
Visiting Oregon regularly in the '90s, the grocery stores had significant sections for their German and Alsatian imports and local versions. Local Muller-Thurgau, Sylvanner, etc. commanding shelf space. Only Pinots came to CA. I don’t see that anymore. Demographics change. What’s left of those plantings are old vines, made by fellow wine geeks who can bear to let it get torn out, making some really wonderful juice they can only sell for a fraction of what the quality demands.
Wes
The laws inOregon mean no price competition so people compete on range of inventory and service.
California was like that before fair trade ended.
My other point about Savennieres was that there might have been two or three available in California back then and now there are lots.
Wes
The laws inOregon mean no price competition so people compete on range of inventory and service.
California was like that before fair trade ended.
My other point about Savennieres was that there might have been two or three available in California back then and now there are lots.
That’s interesting! I’m in California, and don’t think I’ve ever had a Carlo Rossi label wine. Most wine labeled California in most of Europe aren’t really representative of what you find here.
Carlo Rossi was a cousin of Ernest Gallo, I believe.
In the 60s and 70s Carlo Rossi jug ‘wine’ sold for as little as 99 cents a gallon…the word ‘wine’ did not appear on the label. Very popular during my college years.
Hearty Burgundy was the next step up.
Another big ‘yes’ to Vaulorent, but so far no mention of the ‘bookend’… Montee de Tonnerre, another great vineyard adjoining the Grand Crus and also thought to make [close to] Grand Cru quality at 1er Cru prices.
Thread drift, but does anybody know what % of Vaulorent is sold as Fourchaume? And whose?
Alan
Carlo Rossi brand is a plonk, or wine juice at the best. Sweet, artificial ( I call such wines “plastic”), without tannins, so called “easy drinking” for women or girls and I think mostly bought by women in Poland.
Due it’s easy drinking, let say “positive association” with sunny California, availability almost in all shops and let say “average” price it is the most popular wine/brand in Poland.
I do not know how much this plonk could cost in US but in Poland is sold ca. 6 USD
?