Wine drinking, like grape growing, has its seasons

LCBO sales blossom in summer, when whites and rosés are popular

At this time of year, vineyard managers throughout the Northern Hemisphere are watching their vines wake up from winter dormancy. They’re hoping for a growing season with ideal sunshine hours and temperatures, and the right amount of rain at the right time. And of course they want ideal, dry conditions in September and October, when most of the grapes are picked.

Meanwhile, the harvest is over in the Southern Hemisphere, where wines of the same vintage as Northern Hemisphere wines are six months older — not so important in itself, but it explains why we generally get newer vintages from the south before the north: look at all the 2015 wines from Southern Hemisphere producers already in the LCBO.

Any variation from the ideal growing season creates challenges in the vineyard. And as much as many people (wine professionals and consumers alike) say they appreciate minimal intervention in winemaking, they turn away from wines that accurately exhibit the signs of a poor vintage. It’s little wonder winemakers try to mitigate the effects of cold weather, excessive rain and the like.

Just as there are seasons in grape-growing, so there are in wine-consuming, as a recent news release from the LCBO reminds us. The LCBO does close to a third of its total sales in June, July and August: That’s a third of its sales in a quarter of the year. And it’s noteworthy that two of the three busiest weekends, Victoria Day and Labour Day, fall outside that period, making summer sales seem that much stronger.

As for wine, the LCBO reports that rosé wines sell particularly well during the summer. That’s hardly surprising. Many people think of rosé as only a summer wine, a belief that’s reinforced by the practice of the LCBO of keeping a limited (and not very interesting) list of rosés yearround, and supplementing it with limited quantities of other rosés in the summer.

Rosé (as I keep saying) is a wine for all seasons, like red and white wine. Wines served cool or chilled (rosés and whites) are bound to have added attraction in warm weather, but it’s not as if we live in cold houses during the winter. There’s nothing like a cool, dry rosé in an Ottawa January, when it’s minus-30 degrees outside and the snow is piling up. It’s like giving the finger to winter.

White wines also increase sales during summer, which means there’s a dip in the popularity of red wines, particularly (I suspect) the heavier, more tannic reds. It seems that New Zealand and Ontario whites are especially popular. In Vintages, however, California leads the way.