“The Myth of Old World Wine”

I enjoyed this article by James Sligh in Punch.
I was referred to the article by Terroirist, which is a blog that sends wine related articles to your email box. No disclosures from me…

Cheers
Warren

Thanks for posting Warren! A good read, if a bit rambling and not entirely coherently argued.

I was surprised to stumble across him quoting an early lockdown quip that my friend Vikram originated: “It’s only quarantine if it’s from the Quarante region of France; otherwise it’s just sparkling isolation”. It would have been nice to see a proper attribution instead of calling it an internet meme!

“The binary of “old” and “new” world has always been fraught. What would happen if we dispelled with this framework altogether?”

someone got paid to write that? Fraught binaries and dispelled frameworks.

I couldn’t really get what he was trying to argue. The fact that winemaking, even in the Old World, constantly changed, does not refute the view of profound differences between the two - especially if viewed from shorter timeframes, and in practical terms (how does the wine smell and taste). The fact that he mixed politics and wine was quite confusing, I think he wanted to criticise Europacentrism or Colonialism, not sure what saying that Cote-Rotie differs from Barossa Shiraz has to do with it.

Agreed. Interesting article, but it appears it was lacking some level of editorial review to focus the article towards the writer’s thesis, and even clarifying what the thesis actually is. At times the article felt completely disjointed and miles apart from what the original thesis, and the thesis itself seemed to change halfway through.

I do think that a discussion of how relevant the the simplification of a wine’s style as new vs. old world is warranted. Personally, I view that dichotomy as less and less helpful as winemaking styles and preferences across regions change. More and more, there are producers in the “old world” producing “new-world”-style wines, and there are producers in the “new world” producing “old-world”-style wines. The stylistic characterisations of a wine based on its region of origin, while true for some wines (and certainly helpful at times for the consumer), is becoming increasingly blurry as producers experiment and evolve in their winemaking and borrow from practices from across the world.

Well said. Count me as a +1.

And as climate change affects regions differently.