BarcelonaWhen it comes to wine, everyone has their say. From winegrowers, winemakers and winery owners to sommeliers, critics and finally consumers. They are the ones who have the final say on whether a wine is liked, even though it has had to get into their hands before, and that is often thanks to distribution. This link is essential, but it tends to work without making much noise. Christopher Cannan, who was key for the world to discover the virtues of Priorat and Sherry, is the exception. Cannan has brought together five decades of experience in the wine trade in the book A trip through the world of wine, which he first published in English and which Tolosa Wine Books, by wine tourism expert Lluís Tolosa, has just translated into Spanish. His revelations include how some wines have achieved international fame.
No matter how much internet and artificial intelligence there is, Cannan believes that the personal factor remains essential for a wine to succeed. Cannan was born in England in 1949, started at a young age in the wine business and in 1978 founded Europvin (Company for the Selection and Distribution of Fine Wines of Europe) to distribute quality wine that knows how to convey its place of origin, which it ended up doing in half a hundred countries around the world. From Bordeaux it was decisive for the DOQ Priorat wines to have international fame today. Cannan was a visionary about their potential, and opened the doors to the world for them despite the fact that the wine revolution that swept this territory and headed a group of producers between the 80s and 90s was still in its infancy.
Priorat’s rise to fame
Cannan’s idyll with the Priory dates back to before the revolution. It dates back to 1983, when a San Francisco grocer gave him a bottle of the 1974 Scala Dei winery that was worth just four dollars. “I took the bottle to Napa – a renowned wine region in California –, tasted it with a producer and said: ‘How can such a good wine cost so little?'” he recalls in an interview with ‘NOW. When he returned to Europe, he visited the winery, which at the time was not yet in Codorníu’s hands, and in 1985 he began exporting its wines.
At the New York Wine Experience in 1988, he met Álvaro Palacios, who invited him to dinner in Logronyo and explained to him his project of making world-class wines from old Priorat vineyards, a desire that Palacios shared with the other producers of the revolution that Cannan calls “the new wave”. Palacios, who has Ermita among the wines in his Priorat cellar – one of the most reputable and expensive in Spain – also told him that René Barbier, from Clos Mogador, needed him. Through Europvin, Cannan began exporting the wines of this other renowned winery from the first vintage.
In the beginning, Priorat wine could be hard to sell, because “the area was little known and the brands were new”, acknowledges Cannan, but it was from Bordeaux that he forged his leap to the world’s front line. At least once a year Cannan organized a tasting at Europvin for the influential American critic Robert Parker, of the magazine The Wine Advocate. In a single day, Parker tasted up to 150 different wines, sometimes even 200, and in the early 1990s Cannan included some Priorat wine. “At that time they had a little too much extraction and new boot, but that style of wine Robert Parker really liked,” he recalls. They were soon given “exceptionally high” scores by Parker, which Cannan guarantees “helped a lot in the recognition of the Priory as an interesting place for great wines”.
At the end of the 90s, Cannan himself became one of the investors who consolidated the Priorat by opening Clos Figueras, his winery in Gratallops. In addition, he has experiences in the DO Montsant: one good one, the Espectacle wine, and one that was not so good, the Laurona winery. On the other hand, it’s been years since the Priorat moved away from the Parker style – elegance and freshness are now prioritized – which, in his opinion, does not call into question its pre-eminent place or its identity, marked by the mineral touch given by the licorice soil, which translates into acidity and freshness.
Fino is taken with sushi
Today Cannan treasures only one share of Europvin, a company that now belongs to the Caballero group, with brands such as Lustau de Xerès, and Vega Sicilia, a renowned winery in Ribera del Duero and with wines in other places. His link with Lustau leads to delving into another decisive contribution of Cannan to Spanish wine. Europvin began exporting Lustau’s sherries to the United States and had them tasted by Robert Parker, who awarded some of them 96 points, which “helped put Lustau and Sherries as a whole on the market map international wine”, he explains in the book. Until then, continues Cannan, they were considered simple semi-sweet wines, consumed by the elderly and without any consideration of quality. For him, there is no doubt about their multiple possibilities at the table: he recommends finos and manzanillas even with sushi, because they are able to “dominate” the soy sauce.
It took Cannan a decade to write the book, and he finished it due to the forced stop that covid meant. He collects his retail experience even by country, and makes a recommendation: “A person who wants to create or buy a winery, the first thing to do is to think about distribution.” In addition, he claims that it is necessary to maintain presence, because it is convenient when tasting the wines, and above all because it provides lasting relationships and loyal customers. “Human contact is essential: it’s one of the worlds of work where the internet can’t do everything. To sell wine, you need passion and enthusiasm, and you need to travel,” he defends. Although he is of retirement age, he maintains his commercial prowess to sell his Clos Figueras wines, where he works in tandem with his daughter, Anne-Joséphine, and they deal with developing tourism at the winery: the sale of wines in sitand wine tourism activity already represents 40% of turnover.
Sturgeons, bulls and the Concorde
The book contains multiple anecdotes, some from the film. With his future wife Charlotte they established a relationship because she was found on the road with a flat tire. In addition, in his travels to sell or learn more about wine he has ended up fishing for sturgeons in the Volga River, in Russia; he has seen Japanese people dancing flamenco in Japan, and Álvaro Palacios – who wanted to be a bullfighter – do a bullfighting exhibition in La Rioja. He has also participated in tastings of highly coveted wines, those of the Romanée-Conti winery, or in an expensive game between two groups in Singapore who challenged each other to blindly recognize wines from among the best in the world. Cannan has traveled so far that he witnessed the 2000 Concorde disaster in Paris that put an end to this supersonic airliner.
“Now if the wine isn’t good, it doesn’t sell”
Cannan has witnessed the profound changes of wine. “There is a great quality, much better than 50 years ago. Now if the wine is not good, it does not sell”, he says, and believes that, unless they are from consolidated wineries, the ones under 15 euros are screwed ” because of the drop in consumption” and because “young people drink beer and other alcoholic beverages”. He thinks that Priorat wines should be “more expensive”, given that the yield of the vineyard is very low, but at the same time there is a lot of competition and a radical increase in prices could not be made. In addition to Priorat wines, Cannan is very fond of wines from the Portuguese Duero, the German Moselle and South Africa.
2024-05-01 05:00:49
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