Future wine?

[Adam Balic]

Jancis - I have very much enjoyed your contributions to wine education and appreciaton, especially the projected 'Vintage Charts', which I have always found fascinating. The OCW is quite good too.

I am Australian in origin, now living in the UK. One of the most striking thinks I have noticed in the Australian wine scene in the last ten years is how the style of the reds have changed dramatically, from the point that the 1990 Penfolds Grange (Hermitage) was awarded wine of the year by Wine Spectator. Futhermore, the range of Australian wine avalible in the UK and USA seems to be very biased towards a particular style.

What I think of these wines is beside the point, the interesting thing is how the increased popularity of these wines has in some ways influenced the way that they are produced and what the finished style ends up like.

Do you think that an increasingly wine aware public will influence world wine production to a more standardised product (epecially in 'New' and 'up-coming' wine regions like, Germany...) or that wine producers and promoters will see it as an oppertunity to bring great, but lesser known, wines to the publics attention?

I see an issue, not in being swamped with a sea of Cab. Sav. or Chardonnay, but of a standardization wine types. eg. Australian Rhine Riesling is a 'lesser' product for instance, because it is neither the Alsace or German style.

[Jancis Robinson]

Forgive me if I don't go into great detail with this one but it overlaps a couple of Qs already answered - and my last answer is of relevance to it too.

Certainly there are fashions in winemaking - in fact it's extraordinary that each year seems to bring some new thing (full alcoholic fermentation in barrel was awfully 2002, my dear) - but overall I really do believe that the pendulum towards big big wines is starting to swing back and all over the world sensitive winemakers are more and more conscious of balance - in wines and, increasingly, in vines. No point whatsoever in low yields if the vine's not in balance.