A couple of really interesting articles at <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/spanish-wine-imports-maintain-growth/story.aspx?guid=%7B9FF5E3B5-6FE0-4DAD-9C14-14AC4774467E%7D&amp;dist=msr_3" title="Market Watch on Wine Exports">Market Watch </a>and at <a href="http://www.decanter.com/news/news.php?id=277340" title="Decanter on Rioja export slump">Decanter</a> in the last week really gave some insights into how Spanish wine is performing in the current crisis market.  According to Market Watch, Spanish imports are performing better than average in the US wine market, and particularly when you compare their numbers to other major European wine exporters such as French, Italy and Germany.   The value of Spanish table wines increased 5% in 2008 while cava imports performed even better at 9%....obviously cava is good recession alternative to Champagne!  The Decanter article addresses the situation in the UK market, Spanish wines declined in volume by 3% but remained stable in value.  Hopefully this shows that UK and US consumers that Spanish wines offer great value at very inexpensive price points, but also at higher price points.   It’s great to see Spanish wines performing so well in this difficult market...certainly the quality and value of the product on offer merits the recognition of the consumer.  The Decanter article’s main theme was that Rioja imports had declined as compared to their rival regions.  Just as interesting is the comment posted by the UK office of Wines from Rioja, denying any slump in Rioja sales in the UK!  Decanter doesn’t provide any assessment of Rioja’s decline, but I have been thinking of a few.  Read on for some more thoughts....

I have to say that part of me would like to see a decline in Rioja sales...I apologize in advance to Rioja producers.  The reason is that there is so much terrible Rioja wine on the market that often sells anyway because it has the name Rioja.  It is not acceptable to produce inferior wine just because you can sell it.  Living in Spain, you see so many people afflicted by Riojitis...they would rather drink a bad Rioja than a wine from another region.  Rioja is totally dominant still in the internal market, and not necessarily deserving of it.  The consumer in the UK or the US rarely cares if a wine comes from Rioja...they are merely looking for a good quality wine at a good price.   I see many of our customers are unimpressed with the inexpensive Riojas they have tried in their homeland.   Rioja is facing much more competition, especially in value wines from so many Spanish regions.  I think it likely that Rioja will suffer more in the export market as the name Rioja doesn’t dominate in the consumer’s mind as it used to.  I think to assure the future of Rioja, the region has to really improve its wines at the bargain level. 