Little has changed in the world of wine since WFI’s first edition - the big hitters still dominate - but such stasis could soon
be unsettled.
When, in 1999, WFI came into being, what were we drinking? The John Lewis Partnership’s archivist Judy Faraday helped me hunt down some of the wines from the Waitrose list at that time. I was expecting a nostalgia trip, replete with derisive guffaws and gasps
of astonishment. In fact I got the opposite: the sneaking suspicion that, in the wine world, history may be drawing to a close.
Lots of wines have come and gone, of course, and long-term survivors (such as Chateau Segonzac from Bordeaux, Cosme Palacio from Rioja or LA Cetto’s ever-astonishing Petite Syrah from Mexico) have risen in price, though not by much: between 50p and £1.50 in most cases. Waitrose Cava has actually shrunk in price, from £4.99 to £4.49: how do they manage it? The idea that you could get a drinkable white wine from New Zealand for £3.99 now seems quaint, but poor old Eastern Europe is still stuck in the sub-£5 desert, where wine producers’ ambitions wither under the glare of the market’s insistence on discount wines. Maybe Stephan de Neipperg’s toothsome, £8.99 Bulgarian Merlot-Cabernet Enira will help end their drought. I hope so.
In one sense, of course, it is absurd to announce the end of wine history. Each region gets a new vintage annually, and no two are ever alike. Pioneer vineyards are planted every year. Sons and daughters take over from their parents, determined to innovate; the rich, charmed by the winemaking ‘lifestyle’, are constantly redistributing their own wealth in the direction of winemaking.
Wine is beginning to look somewhat settled as big wine brands are now ubiquitous
Yet in another sense, the landscape of wine is beginning to look somewhat settled. Big wine brands are now ubiquitous: if you go out to drink a
glass of wine in a pub chain or workaday wine bar, you are guaranteed something outstandingly boring, sold under an artificial name usually involving a non-existent mountain, hill, creek, bay or ridge. Many consumers, too, confine their wine-buying to bottles sold as a multi-deal or deeply discounted purchase. This tends to mean that they come from the same large producers and will contain the same predictable alcoholic formula.
Move up the quality ladder, too, and the power blocs within the wine world’s United Nations now look as settled as the rules of chess. The majority of fine wines continue to come from Europe. The greatest vineyard sites of the southern hemisphere have not yet proved as propitious as Europe’s – or those making wine from them have not yet learned to treat the grapes gently and respectfully. We can’t afford the finest wines of California. We know little about Australia’s most original and profound wines, almost all the work of small producers who find it hard to get a foothold in the market.
The power blocks in the wine world’s United Nations look as settled as the rules of chess
Bordeaux remains infected by money: half-wine region, half-stock market. The result is a landscape of plutocrats and starvelings. Burgundy is brilliant – if it happens to be your taste. But the fact that most British palates are now raised on Aussie Shiraz and Chardonnay means, though, that Burgundy is often a sour puzzle. Italy, Spain, regional France and Portugal are the home of most of the world’s great-value wines, but finding and understanding them continues to be a task of intimidating complexity.
That’s why the homely, soft comforts of Chile score so well. Argentina, many believe, is potentially better than Chile,
but it’s tougher and more demanding, too. New Zealand continues to be the true lucky country of the wine world, now having added Pinot Noir of comely varietal precision to its range of zingy whites. South Africa is always in the game, but still looking for lighthouse wines to shine its path to the future. Oh, and there’s Germany. The source of the world’s greatest white wines – provided you like Riesling. Many, oddly, don’t.
Most of this, however, was true a decade ago. So where might future change come from? Two different sources. We have no control over one of them; the other is entirely up to us.
The former, as you may have guessed, is global warming. The 2003 vintage was the shot across the bows, and if we get more of those the entire wine-producing applecart will be overturned. The only certainty is that New Zealand will get luckier still. Look out for the Loire valley, too, already breaking its own quality records every year.
The second is a new winemaking revolution. We’ve already had one: science in the winery. Now we need another: prescience in the winery. Most winemakers pay lip service to the idea that great wines are made in the vineyard. Only, though, if we truly let the taste of the vineyard come first, and resist the temptation to fiddle, change and adjust what the vineyard delivers, will the wine world’s diversity cease being illusory and become reality.
The Corker's adventures
Third age of enlightment
Back home to see the aged parents, mum has, during the course of her seventh decade, acquired a taste for Cognac.
This, in a woman for whom luxury has never meant much more than oddments of blackened brass found in charity shops, is limitlessly delightful, so I try to ensure she is never without a bottle of XO. All are sworn to secrecy as to its value. If known, the bottle would languish on the sideboard.
My Dad, meanwhile, prefers to wrestle with the fiery vapours of single malt whisky, which he has never enjoyed more than as his eighth decade draws near, so we keep the Laphroaig and the Bowmore flowing.
Why the love of spirits in old age? I’ve noted the venerable rarely enjoy ingesting large volumes of liquid, and taste buds have had their acuity blunted by time. The third age, perhaps, is when you most appreciate the fierce needles of the ‘water of life’. They, in turn, provide acupuncture that is as much moral as physical.