CYPRUS GOURMET
With its 354 pages, weighing 850 grams, the October issue of the UK’s “Decanter” magazine (cover modestly saying “The world’s Best Wine Magazine”) strained the resource of my letter box. The bulkiness is because it is the Awards issue of Decanter’s enormous annual international tasting. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in it and worth a good browse through. Because I am resident here I hastened to the index of regional judgments. “Cyprus”, I read, “Page 168”. Excitement mounted as I turned to page 168, only to find it was the Greek results (the judges ably led by Nico Manessis, I must add). So, where was Cyprus?
After searching section after section, I eventually found two Cypriot wines on page 222 buried in a section called: “Middle East, Far East and Asia”, where the judging panel consisted of one lady and three gents from China, Singapore, Korea and India, respectively. All well qualified wine judges, no doubt, but their medals went mostly to well known varietals like Chardonnay and Shiraz. Xynisteri may well have been unknown to them.
The two Cyprus wines were: Domaine Hadjiantonas semi-sparkling white (Bronze Medal) and Tsiakkas Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 (Commended). In the category as a whole, there were no Golds, but Silver, Bronze and Commendations were littered with wines from Turkey and Israel.
We did better last year – so didn’t we enter many wines in 2008? And why are we in a geographical section that is not European? After all, we are a European country aren’t we?
The mystery deepens when it is recalled that the chairman of the Decanter judges, Stephen Spurrier, visited Cyprus earlier this year as the star judge of the third Cyprus Wine Competition, announcing to all and sundry at the end of it that Cyprus wines were exploding with quality. Later he seemed to recant, writing a lukewarm piece in the magazine about Cyprus wines.
Being of a suspicious mind, it occurred to me that perhaps, after returning from Cyprus. Spurrier revised his views when he saw the judgments of the “Middle East, Far East and Asia” panel, with its sparse showing of our wines. These would almost certainly have been known to him.
Does all this matter? Not a lot. Decanter is a specialist magazine circulating in the wine business, to collectors and the well-off. The real influences in the USA, the UK and other countries in consumer wine buying are national newspapers and magazines. For example, more than three million people read the New York Times. Wine competitions like Decanter’s, often with more than 10,000 wines entered are largely money-spinners for the magazines publishing the results, because of the obligation on the hundreds of winners to take advertising spaces to announce their success.
And then, I have always maintained that good wine sells, regardless of whether it has “appellation controllée” or similar status, or good write-ups, so this sad saga will not affect the sales of Cyprus wines. Finally, if you look at the Decanter Awards issue you will see that some of the greatest Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne producers and wines from other world famous regions are nowhere to be seen. They don’t need to enter. Which makes a bit of a nonsense of the claims of the organisers: “The World’s Best Wines”
As far as Cyprus wines are concerned, the majority of their sales are in the local market, where a little sticker on the bottle announcing “Medal Winner in Cyprus Wine Competition”, or , soon, “Recommended by Cyprus Gourmet” will mean more than the name of a foreign magazine not many people here have heard of.
Patrick Skinner
