I attended a recent wine tasting hosted at the new Oak Wine Bar and Lounge in Kingston where new wine importer Vinum Society’s Annie Gourion offered guests her wines from the Loire Valley in France. In the ensuing discussions about each wine, I opined that Gourion was very courageous in her endeavour to chart a new path, albeit a difficult one, by importing these natural organic wines from France into Jamaica. Most of the existing importers are taking the easy route; they appear to be focusing on the wines for the mass palate, and I do understand that the need to feed the bottom line is massively important. Luckily for some of us wine lovers, the tourist industry forces the importers to offer a wider range of products to satisfy that market, and we benefit as a result.

It has been just 12 years since I re-started the wine conversation in Jamaica and what an exciting dozen it has been; more wines imported, more venues to enjoy wine, more wines being sold on-premises and off-premises, but I personally am not overjoyed with the diversity of the choices on the market. I do realise that I am in the minority here, but with over 50 counties making wines and many unique growing regions in each country (112 in Spain, 206 in the USA, 472 in France, over 500 in Italy) what importers offer to our market is a tiny sampling of what exists. Of the wines Annie poured, my favourite was the Domaine Catherine & Pierre Breton Chinon, located in the Loire Valley. Each wine had its own unique style, structure and taste, very different from what some have gotten used to drinking here.

Wine – A Commodity?

Recently I have been having discussions with executives and management from local wine importers about the business of wine in Jamaica. I walk away from these discussions ultimately realising, sadly, that to most of these folks wine is a commodity. To most of the folks in the local wine industry, wine is just a product to be imported, sold with profits to be realised. So the impetus to do the deep work that folks passionate about the industry actually do is just not there. The thinking is if a product is not moving, get rid of it. I beg to differ. From my study of the most successful wine distributors in North America, education along with a passionate team that actually enjoy wine are major components of that success.

What I like about wine

I subscribe to a number of wine publications, blogs and newsletters to quench my thirst for wine knowledge and news. In a recent issue of Noble Rot, a quarterly wine lifestyle magazine from the UK, I rather liked Editor Dan Keeling’s opening remarks on the joys of drinking –

“What do you like about wine? Is it how its aromas trigger powerful memories? Or that through the alchemy of fermentation grapes can somehow be transformed into liquid poetry, communicating the nuances of the terroir on which they’re grown? Perhaps it’s about collecting rare bottles, or an itchy curiosity that still makes you impatient to see what lies under every cork. It could be as simple as trying to make sense of the most infuriatingly complex drink in the world.” I like all the above in association with the occasional visit to the place where it’s made, to soak it all in.

So, what do you like about wine?

Christopher Reckord – Information Technology Entrepreneur & Wine Enthusiast. Send your questions and comments to creckord@gmail.com. You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Periscope @chrisreckord and on Twitter: @Reckord