| With the recent release of the documentary film Mondovino, the hotly contested debate over wine styles changing in favour of commercial interests has returned with vigour. Although this dispute has been raging for nearly a decade, the two sides have never been further apart. And the latest mudslinging between two of wine’s most influential critics, Jancis Robinson and Robert Parker, over the merits of a very modern and atypical Bordeaux property, has brought the debate out of the realm of wine professionals and into the public eye.
But just what are Robinson and Parker bickering about and why did filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter travel the globe interviewing thousands of winemakers to make a documentary that would have the world stand up and take notice of the drastic changes occurring in the wine industry today?
There can be no debating that wine has changed a lot over the past two decades. The influences of modern viticulture and winemaking practices have transformed wines from every corner of the map. Some of these transformations have been positive – for example, temperature-controlled stainless steel vats have eliminated the flabby, oxidative whites we used to get from Spain and Southern Italy. But many are more controversial, such as the use of reverse osmosis and micro-oxygenation in Bordeaux. Technology has advanced quickly and winemakers are still catching up, trying to figure out the best ways to use it.
Better information is now available faster than ever before, thanks to the Internet, and winemaking is no longer a trade passed from father to son, but one learned in universities where science is king. Trained off-site oenologists are the norm at most estates, swooping in to evaluate the numbers and leaving a list of treatments for the winemaker to employ – along with a fat bill as they fly off to their next job.
The danger of this is obvious and is one of the major points raised in Mondovino – standard formulas lead to homogeny. Diversity has always been wine’s most appealing character and one it cannot afford to compromise. Yet a dangerous trend is starting to develop; formula-based wines with made-up names and heavy marketing support are starting to beat out the smaller, more traditional examples. Take for example Yellow Tail from Australia. In just over one year it has gone from a concept to the best-selling wine in North America. How did it accomplish this? Simple: a bright package, lots of advertising dollars and all the advantages of modern science – it’s a wine concocted in a lab and designed to appeal to a mass taste profile.
And it’s not just the cheap stuff that’s employing these tactics.
In order to sell expensive wine in the U.S. you need to have Parker on your side – a good or bad score from him could decide the fate of your winery. And make no mistake: this critic likes them big, bruising and, in a word, modern. You need look no further than the traditional wine-producing region of Barolo for a prime example. Its tart, tannic and tightly wound wines have been transformed into soft, approachable early drinkers, no longer requiring the 15-plus years of aging necessary to display their complex and magical bouquets. Parker praises the changes, but many producers now believe the heart of the wines has been torn out, leaving a smooth international style that could be made just about anywhere.
So the squabble between Robinson and Parker rages on. She sees the wines of Bordeaux, once the essence of class and elegance, becoming deep, brooding monsters barely discernible from California Cabernet. He, on the other hand, can’t get enough of them. Even the wines of the New World have been radically altered in recent years; wines today are riper and more alcoholic than ever before. Just 10 years ago the average California Cabernet had an alcohol content of about 13 per cent; today few are under 14 per cent and many are approaching 16 per cent or more. All this in the name of ripe fruit – but can a wine really be in balance at 16 per cent alcohol?
The idea of mass-marketed wines may seem innocent at first, but it comes at a big price. Can we afford to leave the fate of wine, one of our greatest links to the earth and to our past, in the hands of multinational corporations? Don’t they already control enough? If marketing alone dictates consumer choice, it will not be long before consumers don’t have a real choice anymore. Choosing a wine will be like choosing a soft drink – dozens of different labels that all taste pretty much the same.
They say in wine there is truth, but if technology wins out over honest farming, then true wines may become a thing of the past. |
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