The wine trade is founded on a series of sometimes archaic traditions. En primeur must seem bonkers to an outsider – why on earth would you publicly publish ratings which will determine sales of an unfinished product? Trade in-fighting about whether it’s best to bottle wine at source or at point of consumption. What kind of closure is best.
These series of ‘supposed tos’ dictate more than just how the wine trade works. They also filter down to consumers. ‘What’s it supposed to taste like again?’.
It seems an innocuous question, overheard at umpteen tastings, in WSET classrooms and wine shops. Sav Blanc is supposed to taste like this. You’re supposed to enjoy a big, structural red with a steak. Sweet wines are supposed to be for dessert.
But what happens to our understanding of or appreciation for wine if we flip preconception on its head and dive into the grape unknown.
Abe Schoener came to winemaking from the perspective of learning about wine in a practical, hands-on sense. His subsequent Scholium Project has redrawn the boundaries of what wine can taste like, “ selling the experience of extreme authenticity, of something pure and irreplaceable” to a generation of new wine drinkers who are hard-sold locavores when it comes to food.
The renaissance of traditional winemaking processes like qvevri fermentation and ageing has a similar, though less overt, effect. Qvevri, for example, flip the consumer’s perception of taste, colour, ageing – everything – on its head. Yet the fundamentals of wine quality - balance, integration, intensity, length - remain universal.
Opening minds to wines which don’t fit the ‘supposed to’ mould could insure against a future in which wine no longer fits the traditional script. A future where wine may not even be made from grapes. The key to environmental sustainability is diversity – which in wine means embracing native grapes. The growing consumer interest in Eastern European wines, such as wines of Georgia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Greece, is indicative of the consumer’s open minded acceptance of unusual grapes when marketed in an approachable way.
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