In the bag

It’s well known that some Chablis — the posher ones, mainly — can have a slight tinge of green; less well known is that so can some really old tawny ports. Overall, though, I’m glad that we’re not obliged to talk about ‘green wine’ when referring to Vinho Verde, the increasingly sophisticated Portuguese white wine which has been squatting that domain for centuries, but is less green than ever.

There are plenty of shades of green, to be sure, and when it comes to its modern environmental meanings, it’s important to distinguish ‘green’ in terms of organic and biodynamic wines and ‘green’ painted with a broader brush that covers issues like Fairtrade and food miles.

It seems reasonable to divide our examination into three stages: 1) the wine in the bottle; 2) how it got there; and 3) how it got here.

The first bit is relatively easy, but incorporates an anomaly. You can’t make good wine if you don’t take care of the soil. But good wine is never good merely because it’s organic. Scads of the world’s best wine-makers
are biodynamists, but don’t expect them to wear their homeopathic heart on their sleeves — they have no intention of being ghettoised as organic. The fact is that they’re quality-obsessed and the rigour of a biodynamic regime is one way in which that perfectionism can channel itself. It’s business. Don’t expect much in the way of touchy-feeliness around the negotiating table from Burgundy’s Anne-Claude Leflaive or the Rhône’s Michel Chapoutier.

Did I say ‘anomaly’? There’s no shortage of them in green-land. Would you go to the world’s biggest wine company for advice on workers’ welfare? No, I thought not, but talking to the leading South African
wine-maker, Bruce Jack, whose enterprises were hoovered up by world-leading Constellation Brands a year or so ago, I’m not so sure. ‘The Fairtrade boys — Thandi and Fairhills for example — do a good job, but it’s in its infancy,’ he says. ‘Sometimes you have to take route one. If I’m at a farm and I see that the toilet in the men’s dorm is blocked I can say, “Get it fixed by the time I come back next week or I’m not buying your grapes.” It’ll be fixed. The mainstream producers have the power to improve the lives of thousands of people like this.’

By the way, Constellation has put Bruce in charge of wine-making at Kumala, the biggest South African brand in the UK, as well as his own baby, Flagstone, the brand he sold (but obviously didn’t sell out) to Constellation. You know what to do.

There are some very good Fairtrade wines out there, mind you, not least Thandi’s rather elegant Chardonnay and Fairhills succulent Rosé. Oh, and did
I mention that Fairhills’ wines were, until two years ago, distributed by a certain C-Brands, as Constellation is known in the UK? Isn’t there something about lions laying down with lambs?

Anyway, the closet biodynamists and their like tend to be rather on the upmarket side and they compete on quality and prestige as much as price. Presentation is everything in that world, and big, heavy bottles are de rigeur, but some avowedly organic producers are using ones that are three times the weight of the contents.

That’s not anomalous, that’s bonkers. The difficulty is — and you can curse my cloven carbon hoof-print — that I, too, like to pour my wine from something with a bit of gravitas to it. I don’t like the new lightweight glass bottles (think ‘cheap’) any more than I like plastic ones (think too many camping holidays in France). I may even prefer the Tetra Paks that are starting to appear (think reconstituted orange juice cartons and dysfunctional Swedish squillionaires).

But yea, and verily, as far as wine-miles are concerned, I truly have seen the future, and it is bag-shaped.

Pouches are a clean break with the past and all its burdens of association and expectation. They weigh virtually nothing, so their carbon footprint
is reduced by 20 per cent compared with a glass bottle, you can chill
them in minutes and you can squash them into a tight corner of the fridge or picnic-basket.

The first one in the UK is Arniston Bay Chenin Blanc-Chardonnay. It’s well-balanced stuff that even runs to a decent bit of Chenin minerality and is just the sort of easy-going, young-drinking wine that really doesn’t need all that bottle-and-cork palaver. It’s also made by the Company of Wine People, of which Thandi is a part, and who tick all the boxes in terms of sustainability at every stage of their supply chain.

So who says plastic bags are a non-green pariah of the past?

Peter keeps himself in bag-in-box vino by dealing in rare books ar R.A. Gekoski.