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I've got bad news for the wine 'expert,' 'connoisseur,' and snob: your stranglehold on wine knowledge is rapidly loosening. Two seismic developments are simultaneously occurring that will diminish your influence and allow the rest of the world to enjoy wine without your relentless proselytizing. It's perhaps time to find another line of work, or at least, a different topic for the dinner table.
The fact is there are more, and better wines being produced in the world than at any other time in history. And, paradoxically, as more wines are being produced, the public is learning more and more that the single most important element about wine is the taste. These two developments are, at first glance, contradictory, but upon further reflection are feeding each other. They are natural outgrowths of the burgeoning global economy, the incredibly rapid dissemination of information, the ease of global transportation. They are supported by the Internet, ethnic restaurants, an aging US population and health concerns. They reflect our desire to live better, fuller and longer, as well as our cultural identity of independence. Let me back up a moment. Wine has never been a staple of the American table as it is in France or Italy. A confluence of factors; our 'Puritan Ethic,' Prohibition and jingoism, perhaps among others, has caused wine to be viewed as 'fancy,' 'foreign' or proper only at 'special' occasions. The repeal of Prohibition gave the individual states the right to legislate local liquor laws, which has resulted in a hodge-podge of often confusing and contradictory regulations, hasn't helped. As the American public began looking outward in the decades following World War II, the first imported wines embraced were relatively simple, light and sweet wines such as Spanish Sangria, German Liebfraumilch, or Portuguese Rose. At the same time, a relatively small portion of the wine drinking public were learning about, buying and enjoying wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barbaresco, and Barolo. These wines were different, drier, bolder, earthier, harder to understand. They needed to be aged, decanted, and aerated. No wonder the masses ran from them. Just as wine drinkers began turning away from sweet wines, the California wines industry began flexing their muscles. Initially led by the Gallo and Mondavi brothers, good quality, cheap, 'jug' wine started building momentum, allowing people to buy wines that they could drink today that weren't sweet. Meanwhile, the Old World was yo-yoing from disaster to disaster, from poor vintages to poor marketing, from fraudulent labeling to adding anti-freeze. You had to be an expert to pick good wine! Fast forward to the nineties... The stock market is rolling, disposal income is high. The California industry is maturing nicely, thank you, some twenty-five years after spanking the French in the famous Spurrier tasting of '76. The classes call for varietals, with Chardonnay and Merlot leading the pack, the masses still buy White Zinfandel, which supports the whole industry. Cult wines rev up the market; it must be great if you can't find it! And here come the Australians! Fresh, bold flavours, mate! Drink me now or hold me for later, doesn't matter! It'll still taste good. Meanwhile, the critics were riding high. The Wine Spectator, Enthusiast, Advocate and & Wine & Spirits glamorized, popularized, itemized, codified, and simplified wines and wines tastings. Suddenly, everyone was quoting scores. A Best Buy became a must-have wine, and 100-point wines became the Holy Grail. Now, past the turn of the century, the fires have cooled a bit. Wine consumption is still climbing, but its being out-paced by production. There are now 1,500 Aussie producers and they are all looking to export. The California cottage industry has grown up and is now a full-fledged behemoth, producing everything from great to execrable wines. The Old World is fighting back, tailoring wines more to the American palate, identifying more wines by their varietal names, and building multi-lingual websites. Suddenly the world is awash with good wine. The American public has grown more wine savvy, for sure, but perhaps more importantly, we've become less wine-phobic. No longer reserved for special occasions, wine now graces tables both gracious and plain. Rather than being scared by the enormity of the wine industry, we've discovered that there are any number of wines that we like, at prices that we can afford, with labels that we can understand. We've all been to a wine tasting, we all know how to handle a corkscrew, we all now know whether we like Chardonnay or not. And most of us don't read The Wine Spectator, Enthusiast, Advocate or Wine & Spirits. We've figured out that if it tastes good, it is good, and we refuse to wait for the expert to tell us if we're right. We know we are. ARCHIVES MAIN PAGE |
