Monday, Oct 10, 2005
The smell of fermenting grapes is back in Medea, once home to a flourishing industry, writes William Wallis
Throughout Algeria's cruel 1990s the old wine cellar at Ouzera, high in the Atlas Mountains south of Medea, stood empty and idle.
Mohamed Khalili, the lone technician, spent his time scrubbing down old copper vats and repainting pipes, as the pale, rugged hills around echoed sporadically with the sound of gunfire.
Wine was not on the menu and many employees of the state wine-marketing company "went to work with fear in their bellies".
In some areas, militant Islamists who took up arms against the state had begun chopping down vineyards. Medea, 100km south of the capital Algiers, was one of their strongholds. It could have been the death knell for Algeria's wine industry, already in drastic decline since independence from France in 1962.
Today, however, the smell of fermenting grapes again permeates the village of Ouzera as preparations for the 2005 Coteaux de Medea get under way.
Algeria, better known now for its oil and gas exports, was once the world's fourth producer of wine, with peak production during French colonial times of 22m hectolitres. In an effort to re-establish Algerian wine on world markets, the government has been investing billions of dinars in subsidising the replanting of vineyards.
In tandem, the National Marketing Office for Vine Products (ONCV), the state-owned wine enterprise that controls 70 per cent of production, has been modernising and computerising its wine cellars. Forty technicians have returned recently from training in the French wine heartland of Bordeaux.
Since the civil war began drawing to a close at the end of the 1990s, wine production has more than doubled to about 500,000 hectolitres and vineyards, which had all but disappeared, now occupy 45,000 hectares.
The results are still not quite there. Algeria once had 350,000 hectares under production and was a strategic reserve for French wine growers when disease ravaged French vines in the early 20th century.
However, the country's ambitions have changed. Where once the bulk of its robust production was sent abroad for blending with weaker foreign wines, today ONCV management is seeking to produce its own distinctive bottled varieties. It is going into partnership with foreign wine experts to produce "Grands Crus Garage" and has certified some organic brands.
It has had a measure of success already with more ordinary fare such as "Cuvee du President", "Coteaux de Mascara" and "Coteaux de Tlemcen" from the west of Algeria. According to the ONCV, the "Chateau Tellagh 2003" from Medea, where the climate and soil are considered the best in Algeria for wine grapes, was recently among
the top 50 sellers in the Canadian province of Quebec.
The ONCV has also been experimenting with new grapes. The Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Merlot have found their place alongside vineyards of Cinsault, Khalili and other older Algerian strains. Planted in the last five years, the first of these new wines is not yet on the market. But ONCV managers believe quality not quantity is the future and, unusually for employees of Algeria's state companies, they appear eager to get on with a planned privatisation.
At the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan the ONCV will face competition from abroad in the limited but still lucrative domestic market as the government relaxes a ban on imported wine in place since 2002.
The ONCV is also facing an end to its distribution monopoly and managers believe partnership with a foreign company that has its own distribution network will help drive Algerian wines back on to world menus. If the formula is right, the ingredients are there. As the French found, Algeria's soil and climate, with harsh winters and hot summers, is ideal for vineyards. Vines, moreover are among the few suitable cultures for semi-arid mountainous areas, already partly stripped of their young populations seeking work in cities.
Medea is an intensely conservative and religious region. The nearest place to buy a bottle of wine is the capital.
But Mohamed Lakhal, mayor of Benchicao, another Medea town with a history of wine production, says that, after a hard decade, farmers are beginning to replant vines. "They don't drink. But after witnessing the collapse of the local economy they are realising again the commercial value of the vineyards."
By WILLIAM WALLIS
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