Time once again for my hard-hitting, no holds barred wine predictions for the coming new year. As an Aquarius, my predictions are based solely upon my gut, which has been getting larger with onset of middle age, but also a dash of experience thrown in for good measure. I accept no responsibility, however, for anyone who loses their life savings or even a bet for beer because of my predictions.

Phuket has been through a lot in the past seven years; SARS, Bird Flue, Tsunamis, a military coup, and now Kenny G 24 hours a day on 90.5 fm. Let’s hope this next year is better and that we can all get on with getting down to the beach with a chilled bottle of wine, which is why we moved here in the first place.

Best wishes to my readers this holiday season. May your wines be dry, your corks sound and all that jazz. Now, here are the predictions:

Sauvignon blanc fatigue

Sauvignon blanc, with its crisp, tangy and refreshing citrus notes has become the perfect alternative for those bored with Chardonnay. But one can only enjoy so much tang in their life, isn’t that right?. Sauvignon blanc just demands too much attention; you must be switched on and not chilled out with a Sauvignon. And like a recent convert to a new religion, the fire that burns bright often comes to an abrupt end. The Sauvignon craze is likely to die down abruptly and unexpectedly.

In fact, expect a Chardonnay revival

In the 1970s there was, essentially, no Chardonnay to be found anywhere outside of Burgundy. By the late 1980s Chardonnay was everyone’s darling. Now it's fashionable to disparage the variety.

Chardonnay was always the perfect white wine because it offends no one and it is the ideal grape for winemakers to plant because it does well anywhere and is easy to work with. But the oaky, manipulated and over the top monster styles produced in Australia and California, and copied elsewhere in the past decade have turned people off.

A quiet revolution in Chardonnay style has been taking place and monster wines of yesteryear are becoming increasingly difficult to find. Taking their place are wines with fresh, clean, lighter and honest character that takes you back to what you fell in love with Chardonnay about in the first place - comfort that asks little but gives a lot without trying.

As wine lovers discover the change in Chardonnay taking place, Sauvignon blanc will become something of a special occasion wine, as it once was, and Chardonnay will retain its throne as Queen of whites. Don’t write off Chardonnay just yet.

Alternative closures and packaging

I have to chuckle at the people who now tell me they would never buy a wine unless it comes with screw top closure. Most of them refused to even consider buying wine with screw top closures as recently as one year ago.

Meanwhile, Australia has revolutionized wine packaging by putting expensive wine in bag-in-the-box containers you serve from a tap, like a beer. Grange, Australia’s most expensive wine, will go to screw top next year.

However, a new innovation, the glass stopper is already becoming the preferred alternative to screw tops, and top wineries like Germany’s Schloss Volrads have already moved to glass stoppers.

What’s next? Wine in a can? Yes! It’s happening in Italy. Look for square bottles instead of round ones; they take up less space and reduce shipping costs, so why not? More choices in portion size will also become commonplace.

As wine becomes demystified and more of a consumer staple, you can expect to see more innovation in packaging that will benefit the consumer.

Death and taxes

There are two classes of people who pay taxes in Thailand. Foreigners and people who shop at Tesco. If you are a wine lover you probably fall into one of these two classes, hopefully the former and not the latter, at least when it comes to buying wine.

Anyway, everyone always asks me, when will wine taxes go down? My prediction, again, this year is that they will never go down, only up. Not in our lifetime.

Smaller lists, better lists

The days of the 300 wines wine list are over. Restaurants with massive tombs filled with analogous and staid choices are the new dining dinosaurs. People want fun, comfort, ease and simplicity when dining, they don’t want to be intimidated. Colossal wine lists are out.

In their place are compact lists with a powerful but limited array of individualistic wines, both boutique and respected brand names; wines that make a statement. This fits with the trend towards drinking less but better. A list with 40 wines that are all spot on resonates with much more impact in today’s lifestyle than ponderous leather bound lists that look like an unabridged copy of War and Peace. Diners want that like they want a shotgun blast to the face.

Staff who know what they are doing

In a restaurant, diners just want someone who can recommend two or three wines that will taste good with the food they are ordering and that are similar in style to their favourites, whatever they may be. Restaurants whose staff can offer nothing more than “this one, good” are not going to be competitive in the business of selling wine and satisfying guests.

Ultimately, the ability and talent of staff reflects the financial commitment to training and the degree of priority given to guest satisfaction, which is another way of saying the personal priorities of ownership. When people are paying Phuket prices they have the right to acceptable service standards; there just is no excuse for anything less. Competence also pays off for restaurants that invest in their staff because happy guests buy more and return more often. It’s really that simple and time is running out for those who offer anything less.

Zero tolerance for bad stemware.

People are just fed up with cheap, heavy, oxidized stemware that masks the aroma of great wines and that makes them look like a tasteless slob from the outback instead of the sophisticated and privileged person they want to see themselves as being when they go out to a restaurant. Ditto for silly novelty designs and coloured glasses. People want simplicity, elegance and harmony in their stemware and let’s be honest, when paying good money for wine, they deserve it. How any restaurateur or hotel can invest hundreds of thousands of baht for fine wine then balk at paying a little more for stylish stemware has always baffled me. Cheap glasses send a powerful signal to diners not to buy wine.

And don’t even get me started on decanters. If diners don’t order expensive wine it is because they know the decanter will be as funky as George Clinton’s underwear. So, invest in a proper bottle brush and decanter drying stand to keep your decanters in top form. People expect nothing less than the best; why not give it to them?

Thai wine’s last gasp

Grapevines evolved in desserts; they are adapted to drought conditions and do not produce quality fruit where there is an abundance of moisture, especially on deep, fertile soils like those found in Thailand. Grapevines also require a period of winter dormancy in order to accumulate carbohydrates for the coming growing season. Close to the equator here in Thailand there is no winter and the growing season is all year long, so vines never stop growing and produce two crops of grapes per year, which causes then to make rather bland fruit and even to die in as little as ten years.

It is costly to grow grapes here and requires excessive chemical inputs. The resulting wines are, at best, average, so what is the point? Eventually, wealthy egos will have to be put aside and investors must acknowledge that Thai vineyard land would be better used to produce food for the Thai people. No nation can be good at everything.

Chinese wine on the way

As China continues to open Thai markets for itself and gobble up what part of commerce and culture it has not already got its hands on, expect to see Chinese wine appearing on restaurant wine lists and on store shelves throughout Bangkok. China has more arable land suited for fine wine growing than all the hectares planted to wine in Australia and California combined. Labor is cheap, technology and knowledge can and is being imported. Within a few years China will be producing very large quantities of exceptionally good wine. At some point it is inevitable that a Chinese wine will take a gold medal in an international blind tasting, creating awareness and credibility that will fuel an export boom of cheaply priced wine of remarkable quality. It will happen suddenly and forcefully, and consumers will quickly abandon New World value wines like those of Australia and Chile for Chinese wine.