Year 10, Number 7

Year 10, No. 7

Greetings,

Here where I'm based in Southern Catalunya, Spain, the harvest is grinding its way down into a finish. Obviously, this isn't the harvest that anyone foresaw at the start of the year when optimism flowed... and before the rains came... and then stopped, giving way to an abrupt boost of temperatures, no rain, and a short maturation cycle.

Will 2020 be a classic year? Definitely not, but a number of wineries I've talked to are confident that they'll still make their top wines even though grape losses have been from 30-80% due to mildew and other issues. As to where they'll be selling these 2020 wines in a couple of years, well, that's a question to ponder another day.

But this has been a year for pondering if nothing else which is why two of the articles included here elaborate on topics I've been thinking about for some time. The first focuses on how to reboot the wine writing competition as we're at a crossroads on the awards front. The other is looking into how o…