Free thought discusses international wine trade issues and offers a collection of past essays and notes for background information.

 Earlier columns penned for Harpers Wine and Spirit Weekly dealt with similar topics.

• FUTURES
  
  Waning price support, rising financial instability and recurring natural hazards warrant the need to provide wine professionals with some means of hedging their incomes against price volatility (or 'risk'). The best way to achieve stabilisation is through openly traded price contracts and wine futures happen to be one of them. Careless wording has left many people confused about what they really are – or were.
  
  The page on wine futures provides a few definitions and illustrations of this powerful (and therefore controversial) financial instrument.
   
• HEALTH-TEMPERANCE
  
  'Taxation–health–temperance' is often viewed as the quintessential financial arrangement by governments thirsty for cash and order. In spite of its generally healthy properties and image, wine has been engulfed by various policies aimed at reining in the alcoholic drinks industry. The global campaign waged by the WHO against alcohol abuse for instance, helps to understand why some executives are concerned with the future of their trade.
   
• MARKET IMBALANCES / SURPLUSES
  
  Thanks to globalisation and much like individual companies, wine producing regions strive to build a competitive advantage over their rivals. But overnight international success can breed overconfidence. As expected, surpluses started to creep over Australia in the early noughties (see The Economist below) and ceased to be just a fixture of Europe's old-style interventionism, which for decades attempted to stabilise producers' incomes by supporting wine prices.
   

THE ECONOMIST's Wine Survey

Globalisation, industry consolidation, branding and the clashing views between the Old and the New World, are all dealt with in a most accessible fashion by coffee-cum-chocolate addict Gideon Rachman in a rare, insightful Christmas 1999 survey which The Economist keeps at your fingertips.

Still compelling after all this time, this piece of research came 16 years after the magazine aired its concern over massive wine surpluses (Overflow - The World's Wine Trade, penned by Nicholas Faith, Christmas 1983). Plus ça change ...

The 1999 survey was deemed 'premium content' and free access restricted to subscribers for a while, but both surveys should be freely available for consultation in your local library.
 

Source

Contents

INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS

WTO - International Trade Topics

A wealth of information on ongoing trade negotiations at the World Trade Organisation.

WTO - Geographical Indications (TRIPS)

The World Trade Organisation's specific page on Geographical Indications, part of the TRIPS agreement

WIPO - Geographical Indications

The World Intellectual Property's own page on Geographical Indications provides a few handy definitions. WIPO is the WTO's official partner with respect to TRIPS.

FAOSTAT

FAO lets you view and download trade data for the individual countries and the world (choose '+' for the aggregate figure, '>' to gets all its constituents).

OIV

The world's largest intergovernmental body for wine offers a list of recommendations, e.g. on standards for oenological practices, as well as some useful reports and statistics.

'NATIONAL' ORGANISATIONS

EU Commission - wine

The European Union's 'wine page' (so-to-speak) will lead you through the amazing Common Market Organisation for Wine - legislation and statistics.

Wine Institute of California

The California (US) wine industry's main trade association offers you a host of useful and reliable statistics on the American wine market, plus a few other international data.

Useful information on Chile's meteoric rise to the top league of new world exporters - from the industry's official website.

Instituto Nacional de Vitivinicultra (INV)

Argentina's administrative body for the wine industry provides an outstanding selection of the latest data, incl. separate figures for trade with MERCOSUR - in Spanish.

SAF Wine Industry Statistics

The place to click if you want a wide range of official statistics on the South-African wine industry, from acreage to export.

Wine Australia

The official site of the Oz industry offers excellent statistics. Accept the disclaimer and you will be able to get free data on a variety of topics including exports and harvests.

New Zealand Wines Online

New Zealand wine industry's official and open website is packed with useful data stretching back to 1990.