As a kid, your correspondent loved television, cars and newspapers. He grew up with four TV channels, three automakers, and two daily print papers. How very quaint and meager this all seems now.
No amount of nostalgia can induce me to want to return to the limited horizons of those days. The world as I grew to know it was simply too large, too varied, too full of surprises not to be embraced. Surely, reader, you feel the same. Or do you?
I ask because while it’s true that we have more choice in wine than ever before (a very good thing), trade reports reveal that for most consumers the bounds of their wine experience are still set by a tiny subset of well-known grape varieties. Among these, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Sauvignon Blanc will be the most familiar.
You might argue that this tenaciously held position has been adopted in self-defense, the wine world world being, as it is thought, so very confusing. Or you could lay responsibility for such chronic small-mindedness on the industry itself and its low opinion of consumer intelligence. No matter. The end of the Grapey Gang of Five may be, if not quite at hand, at least unquestionably in the cards. What’s driving it is our warming planet.
You know climate change is real when business interests begin to take it seriously, and not just as a talking point. Right now, national wine production governing bodies are facing some very big decisions on how best to confront a many-sided problem.
An example: the French authorities have tapped a number of obscure, disused varieties as fruit sources for winemaking — among them Cualtacciu, Felen, Fleurtai, Rossula bianca, Uva biancona, Vintaghju, and Brustianu — each possessed of qualities that make them well-adapted to conditions climatologists are telling us to expect in the coming decades.
More surprising because more specific, are steps recently taken in Bordeaux (a place where new ideas once went to die) where years of research and consumer trials have resulted in what may be the first change in the roster of approved grape varieties in that region since appellation rules first saw the light of day. The authorities there specifically cite climate change as the chief motivating factor.
“The vignerons were worried,” the president of the Bordeaux Wine Council said, “that if nothing was done, in 40 years Bordeaux as we know it would not exist.” Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc appear to be the most endangered. There’s more work to be done, of course, but for now, growers are being encouraged to establish test plots of new cultivars, at least some we can expect to find popping up in our Bordeaux blends in the not-too-distant future.
Your role in all this is important. As a consumer, it’s going to be your job to maintain an open mind and an inquiring palate as we continue the search for vines that will keep pleasing, appetizing, engaging wine on our table for generations and centuries to come.
One bottle of nicely mature Brustianu here, waiter! And better make it snappy …