Guest Column / Hugh Johnson: Pocket Fuel

"As I read it, the exploration of what wine can be to different people has only just begun" – Hugh Johnson / wine writer

A census in a rabbit warren, students in a telephone box… I have used all sorts of similes over the years for the job of squeezing the wine world into your pocket. But 30 years on from its first edition, my Pocket Wine Book has twice as many pages packed tighter than ever. More choices; more wines from more places. Better wines? Real choices? What does progress consist of when it comes to matters of taste?

One change has dominated the whole period: the shift of emphasis from place to grape. Thirty years ago the name of a wine, with few exceptions, was its place of origin. In most cases a certain grape was mandatory, or so traditional that it was taken for granted. Only new wine regions had a choice, and naturally defined themselves by what they chose to plant.

No single factor has made wine more understandable to the layman. Within 10 years, grape varieties became the universal key. Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Rhine and the Rhône could only watch as they saw their “birthright” pillaged by countries with no regulations or inhibitions – but with conditions for growing grapes that looked enviably benign. In shorthand, the New World.

California started the revolution. By 1977, and my first edition, “varietal” was a buzz word signalling the new idea. Not entirely new; Australia had been using grape names with cheerful inaccuracy for decades. In the late 1970s, California started to export in earnest. Australia was soon in pursuit. In the mid-1980s, the UK market became conscious
of New Zealand, and by the 1990s of Chile and, as the decade progressed, of South Africa and Argentina. There was no precedent for the speed of their success, and in the new, democratic world of wine, where what counted was a clean, strong taste at a low price, no rapid response that Europe could give.

Europe, at least officially, was heading in the opposite direction to this liberal trend. In the 1990s, its governments were still tightening regulations and raising costs. But some countries saw an avalanche of money as Europe applied its social model, “rebalancing”, as they term it, the fortunes of its constituent parts. Europe’s warm regions became a new New World on the doorstep of the Old.

Their grapes gave identities to new wines; safe ones to begin with. Cabernet Sauvignon is a masterful grape, adaptable and recognisable. Chardonnay became its white opposite number. Every new wine region planted them. Then, by the 1990s, a reaction had set in: what other flavours are there, please? Each country or region volunteered its own: California offered Zinfandel, Australia Shiraz, Argentina Malbec, Chile Carmenère.

The situation was different in Europe’s New World. Italy has a thousand grape varieties of its own. Spain, Portugal and Greece each have a full quiver of contenders. The next phase was to put them on parade. It is where we are now. High streets are already bazaars of ethnic cooking: why would consumers not want to try Nero d’Avola, Trincadeira or Agiorgitiko?

These are the tectonic movements that have multiplied our choice tenfold, and doubled the number of pages in my pocket book. Compared with the creation of a new wine world, the old seems hardly to have stirred. The lists of Bordeaux’s classed growths and Burgundy’s grands crus are no longer than they were, and these regions would deny that they have changed in any essential way.

They are informed by science, of course, as we all are. But in a sense, they hardly dare to change: they are defined by the vines and soil they inherit. Their terroir is their very being. And so far, most, if not all, of the inheritors have kept faith with
it, even in the face of a public looking for something different.

For taste has changed. The wines of warm countries are now the norm, rather than an aberration. Where the north strains for ripe grapes, the south has them on demand. Lower acidity, less astringent tannin and higher alcohol are all popular. It is tempting to make them your goal, and American critics reward those who do.

What do consumers want from wine, is finally the question. A thirst-quencher? An investment vehicle? A trophy to impress? The art form developed over centuries of inspired research? There is little consensus, apparently, over the answer, either among those who drink wine or those who make it. In every other industry, choice is being eroded. Globalisation, they said, would be the end of variety; all wines would eventually taste the same.

As I read it, the exploration of what wine can be to different people has only just begun. Its resources of style and flavour are far greater than we realise. We are beginning to discover Greek grapes, and Sicilian, but Eastern Europe is undeveloped, the Middle East unexplored. What do we know of the flavours of Georgia, with perhaps the oldest of all wine-grape varieties, or how they will be interpreted by populations who have yet to meet wine?

One day China will have a wine culture, and India, and even, one distant day, perhaps Arabia.

It cartwheeled all my preconceptions when recently I drank Thai wine grown on tropical islands in the Mekong delta. The taste was different, but it was wine, and I enjoyed it. My guess is that in another 30 years, no pocket will be big enough for my book. 

© db September 2006

Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book 2007 is published on September 12 by Mitchell Beazley.