The 2010 vintage was a great one for Delicata’s Malta-grown Sauvignon Blanc and the good news is that discerning wine drinkers capitalised and purchased all of the company’s 2010 Gran Cavalier Sauvignon Blanc. The resulting bad news is that Delicata has unfortunately sold out.
Running out of certain vintages of good wines should not come as a shock to many wine enthusiasts. It is a common enough occurrence with quality foreign wines that are produced in limited quantities. That’s why so many are snapped up once they appear on the market by eagle-eyed wine lovers, who are always on the lookout for something good to either drink straight away or to lay down and mature for a while.
When the current DOK and IGT quality wine legislation came into play back in 2008, for wines from the 2007 vintage onwards, not only did it re-define grape growing and wine-making procedures that would guarantee origin and improve quality, it also imposed strict controls on the amount of grapes that are grown in each and every vineyard.
On arrival at the winery, every farmer’s batch of grapes is weighed and recorded by a government inspector and if the quantity of grapes is on or below the permitted yield, they will be classified as either IGT, DOK or DOK Superior and then move on to pressing. Once the grapes have been pressed and transformed into wine through the process of fermentation, each winemaker has to declare which brand the fermented wine will eventually go into and the exact number of bottles it will produce.
If 100 hectolitres of a particular wine has been produced, that will equate to 13,333 x 75cl bottles and once that volume has been declared, 13,333 numbered banderols will be released to that winery by the Agriculture Department, for use on that particular wine and audited records have to be kept to substantiate that.
These controls are a good thing, but it does come at a cost. The focus is more on the quality than the quantity of the wines produced, and running out of certain Maltese wines at certain times is going to be a fact of life, like it is in other wine producing regions where small quantities are made.
Our viticultural areas in Malta and Gozo are small and fragmented. There are no rolling hills of vines that you will see in the likes of Italy, the South of France, Australia or California.
Prior to these controls, individual farmers or wine-makers decided what quantity of grapes were grown in their vineyards and the wine-makers themselves had far more flexibility when it came to things like blending. These are now things of the past when it comes to the production of quality wines such as IGT and DOK.
The news for Delicata Sauvignon Blanc lovers is, that the 2011 vintage is looking (and tasting) good but, although the wine itself will be ready by the end of next month, DOK protocols will not allow it to be released onto the market until January 1, 2012.
I wish I could give a good reason why, but unfortunately I can’t. It’s just bureaucracy gone mad! There is no valid reason that I can think of why our Malta DOK wines should not be released by November of the same year, just in time for Christmas, arguably one of the busiest times of the year, rather than waiting until January. The 2011vintage AOC French Beaujolais will be on our shelves by mid-November, even though they harvest their grapes weeks after ours, as will other quality DOC quality wines from neighbouring Italy. So, if you’d like to give a friend or relative a 2011 vintage bottle of quality wine for Christmas, it will have to be foreign, because all the Maltese wines, which would have been ready for months, will not be available.
On a more positive note, the quantity of Delicata Sauvignon Blanc 2012 vintage grapes should increase as a result of this year’s re-grafting exercise which saw white grape varieties re-grafted with surplus reds. Under this project, the Delicata vines that were re-grafted back in June of this year have flourished and the company has achieved an above 98 per cent success rate with its re-grafted Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Moscato grape varieties. This is thanks to the after care service of its contracted vignerons under the close supervision of Delicata’s viticultural team. That will hopefully result in larger quantities of the Gran Cavalier Sauvignon Blanc 2012 wine, climatic conditions permitting.