Dr Vino's wine blog

Meet the newest wine blogger! Her name is Mariann and she hails from Denmark! When she’s not blogging she is known as Mariann Fischer Boel, the Commissioner of Agriculture of the European Union. Check out her blog.

She’s just getting into blogging so she’s just learning the ropes. For example, she hasn’t learned yet that she doesn’t have to put her photo in EVERY posting. And she doesn’t have a blogroll and couldn’t hyperlink her way out of a conference room. But at least she has comments! And she blogs in the blogging lingua franca–English!

This woman, who carries the big stick of wine policy reform, has the cojones to go to regions that could be affected by her radical initiative to uproot vineyards, reduce subsidies and upgrade quality. She went to Sicily to pat on the back and taketh away (see the Bloomberg story on her trip). And she lived to blog the tale. Roll the tape from her blog:

We visited vineyards in the hills around Etna whose high quality red wines matured in oak barrels are finding ready markets all across Europe and further afield.

As we work towards major reforms in both fruit and vegetables and wine, I was really inspired by what I saw. European farmers really can do well if we give them the correct conditions to allow their entrepreneurial talents to flourish.

Of course, it would be wrong of me to pretend that everyone was happy. I had the impression that my speech in general went down well. But I did notice some mumbling in the audience when I moved to the subject of wine reform – and more specifically the proposals for grubbing-up and ending distillation.

I know this seems harsh, but we cannot continue spending half a billion euros disposing of unwanted wine. We need to spend the money on improving the quality and marketing the results. The winemakers I saw in Sicily showed what is achievable if you have an open mind and a good business sense.

MFB is pro-barrique! And also a little unsure of who she’s blogging for. Clearly it’s not her constituency–European farmers–since they get hit with the third person pronoun. Maybe European taxpayers? Maybe Brussels bureaucrats? But, hey, even if it amounts to little more than a pamphlet, at least she takes comments!