"Bottle of Fuzion, that’s what the world is today, hey hey"

Posted June 21st, 2009 05:06 by John Szabo

sang Graham Duncan of Now Magazine, who burst into that little ditty as the topic of Fuzion came up in the LCBO lab one morning. Has the world gone mad for Fuzion wine?

I was recently asked to be a guest along with Mike Mandel (aka Deacon Dr. Fresh, a gonzo wine journalist) on Canada’s national radio station, CBC, on the Radio Q show with Jian Ghomeshi to discuss the phenomenal success of the brand called Fuzion made by the Familia Zuccardi. Listen to the podcast here: http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/qpodcast_20090528_16267.mp3

Since its launch in late July of last year, the brand, a blend of Shiraz and Malbec has sold more than 225,000 cases, making it the most successful debut in Liquor Control Board of Ontario history, and this despite severe out-of-stock issues as the frenzy took hold. It is reportedly selling over a thousand cases a day at the moment, and that people are lining up at the LCBO to buy cases at a time for fear of it going out of stock again. A white blend of Chenin and Chardonnay and most recently a Shiraz rosé have been added to the line, both of which are selling extremely well too. It has created nothing short of a frenzy; truly extraordinary.

As I prepared for the interview, several thoughts crossed my mind. As a professional in the wine business, I can appreciate that any product that brings more people into the wine drinking market has positive aspects. Everyone needs to start somewhere. My parent's generation got started with Mateus rosé, Blue Nun, Black Tower and the like. Later it was Wolf Blass Yellow Label, then Yellow Tail. Fuzion just fits in to a long line of successful brands that have mass appeal and jive with the tastes of the times. And ultimately many of these people have become regular and occasionally even high-end wine consumers, which is precisely what the wine business wants. As someone who also makes wine, I can marvel at the consistency of production, how the wine maintains a standard flavor profile in the way a brand is suppose to be consistent (though I think the 2007 vintage was slightly better than the current 2008). And I can also be impressed at how the flavor profile of the brand can be pre-designed by a team of marketers and flavor scientists, in essence, and then the raw material shaped and engineered to fit that profile. From a marketing perspective they have been spot-on as well, and have obviously done their homework and have understood their target audience.

On the other hand, it is precisely these points that turn off most drinkers with more than a passing interest in wine. Wine is not supposed to be a commodity. It's not supposed to taste the same year after year. It's somehow unnatural, and must have been manipulated in some way in order to achieve that 'perfect' flavour profile. The main factors driving a wine style should be the type of grape(s) you plant and where you plant them. The rest is up to nature, and the natural process of fermentation. That scientists in lab coats can pre-determine flavours and then use the material they have to achieve that goal seems to somehow violate the essence of what wine is supposed to be: a natural product, complete with imperfections. Fuzion is sort of the vinous equivalent to Britney Spears: loved by many, but spurned by anyone with any musical savoir-fair, sense of art, culture. In any case, not really taken seriously. It's tarted-up, eye-candy for the mouth (mouth candy?). There is a calculated amount of residual sugar in the wine, designed to appeal to as broad a segment as possible, as sweet is far more acceptable to the human palate than bitter tastes.

You may argue with any and all of these points, in fact I hope you do. That means you care. There is one last and important point, and that is the insidious side effects of the Fuzion phenomenon: the danger that this could spell the end of diversity. The argument runs somewhat parallel to the discussion between organic and conventional farming in the agro-food industry. We know that it is far cheaper and more efficient to farm with conventional chemicals on a large-scale mono-crop. And if all you care about in a tomato, for example, is that it be cheap, red and blemish-free, then you are likely to buy the conventionally farmed type over the more expensive, occasionally imperfect organically-grown tomatoes. Similarly for wine, if all that you care about is that it be cheap and drinkable, then Fuzion is actually a pretty good option for you. It has come out on top in a number of ‘recession wine’ blind tastings and it has some obvious appeal.

But conventional agro-business does nothing to support diversity. In fact it is totally opposed to diversity, since multi is harder to control and manipulatethan mono. I’ll leave aside the host of other problems that this approach brings about, and focus instead on the frightening loss of small-scale farms and the diversity that they bring to our tables: dozens if not hundreds of unique varieties of all sorts of produce are at risk of disappearing if big business is to take over the entire market. You can also count on the end of the family-run farm, and a way of life that has been around since humans left nomadic existence behind.

The parallel in wine in eerie: if one is to foresake all others in order to drink one type of wine, as inexpensive and good as it may be, what is to happen to the thousands of other wine producers around the world working in diverse terroirs with unique grape varieties? There is no way to compete pound for pound with large-scale producers. It is far less expensive to make wine in most parts of Argentina than it is in Ontario. Or northern France. Or Germany. Or anywhere else for that matter with a cooler, more marginal climate, where disease pressures are higher and there isn’t the possibility of unlimited irrigation.

The trouble is that many of the world’s greatest wines come from these viticulturally challenging areas. We have to be willing to pay a premium for these unique products, like you might pay a little more for an organically grown heirloom tomato. I’d rather eat half as many flavourful tomatoes and pay twice as much if budget is an issue, just as I would rather drink more unique wines half as often at double the cost. Large scale brands that cause “oenophilic monomania”, as the Deacon put it (the exclusive devotion to one wine) risk putting those vignerons on the impossibly steep slopes of the Mosel, or the ridiculously poor soils of Santorini, or the low yielding granite of the northern Rhône out of business if no one is willing to buy there wares. And that would be a real shame. Everybody needs some inexpensive wine for everyday drinking or parties or family gatherings. But it shouldn’t be the only wine in the cellar. In the world of taste, vive la diversité.

The Master's Peace on Wine by John Szabo's blog