Sunday, April 17, 2011

About the Globalization of wine

Wine in the French style is being made in California, Oregon, Chile, Argentina, and other countries with the purpose to reach a greater number of consumers. Not a bad marketing strategy, but this new learned skill of our modern winemakers is defeating the concept of terroir, one of the few things that make wine different, rather unique, and something that separates wine from any other drink on earth. This is something that makes impossible the job of an expert in trying to determine, in a blind tasting, the origin, style, or particular characteristics of any given wine. This doesn’t make wine bad either, but, do we really want to have something called wine that always, no matter where it was made, taste the same year after year? Most of you would not want wine become another soda pop, as unsophisticated as a beer, or just another very consistent, always good, kind of beverage.