The Alternative History of Modern Wine

I've always loved those What If stories, like "What if the North had not won the Civil War?"  "What if Hitler had triumphed?"  "What if Attila the Hun had died somewhere in Pannonia before he got to Italy?" 

These are all cliches, and the stories usually wind up with the restoration of our manifest destinies.  You know, the USA and the CSA are reunited in sea-to-sea glory, though nothing is ever mentioned about the status of black people.  American insurgents topple the violent, corrupt, comically incompetent regime of the Nazis, like "Hogan's Heroes" meets Abu Graib.  The Roman Empire soldiers on and Pope Leo is consigned to the dustbin of history; in a few centuries the Romans hit the beach at Miami and the SPQR flag flutters over Boise in a century or so, with everyone speaking some sort of Latin.  (Like Spanish.)

These are obvious and well-hashed story lines for alternative history.  But no one, to my knowledge, has attempted an alternative history for modern wine.  Not that it would alter a thing, but it is a useful exercise in salutary masochism to imagine What if...

the "Judgment of Paris" in 1976 had handed the palm to French producers instead of Americans?  What if Robert Parker had remained the slender, samizdat publisher of an obscure newsletter whose readership was confined mostly to greater Baltimore?  What if...

The clock struck thirteen.  The merry pranksters of Squadra Spufilazione had festooned all Verona with posters and banners of lettuce leaves and an attractive couple making funny icky faces as they drank their wine from vinegar bottles.  On each poster and banner was written Spufilare per godere!  (Spoofilate to enjoy!).  This was a serious provocation.  Everywhere one looked were angry wine folk from all over Veneto, and indeed all of Italy, tearing down the posters, cursing the Squadra as Communists, anarchists  and ball-breakers. 

"Those bastards want to destroy everything we are and stand for.  All our traditions.  All the things that make our wines what they are!"

Many hearty assents to this. 

I kept silent and found the queue for the shuttle bus to the Vinitaly pavilion.  I wasn't sure how I felt about these presumed disturbers of the wine peace.  I did feel that certain traditions had to be upheld, but not at the expense of experimentation and innovation.  For example, the so-called Wine Czarina, an American of all things (US wine consumption was a liter per person and very much an accessory to upper-class life), had decreed 10 years earlier that cold fermentation was anathema and should be driven out of every serious cantina in Italy and, indeed, around the world.  Same for chaptalization and for small oak barriques.  Sulfur, too.  All gone.

The price of white wine had skyrocketed, and most of the whites produced were either tired and flabby or so sour that they did in fact taste like near-vinegar.  Alcohol levels were traditionally low, around 10.5 - 12%, but only with the better vintages.  Spoilage rates were high, with producers blaming the Portuguese cork manufacturers and the Portuguese blaming the no-spoofilation orthodoxy that reigned worldwide.

The red-wine situation was better, as usual.  The strict rules on viticulture and vinification favored them, although there were exceptions to this.  The banning of modern technologies of all sorts prevented many warm areas from making the light wines that were de rigueur these days, so they were forced to make imitation Ports and other decoctions, which made them enough money but brought no ego gratification to the winemakers.  All the good ones had left for greener -- in every possible sense of the word -- vineyards. 

I shivered in the sharp wind blowing in from the Adriatic, awaiting the squall that seemed to be forming with the clash of warm land air and cold sea air.  I longed for a glass of warming Port, but such luscious wines were luxuries at 25 euros a glass.  Or more.  The world craved such wines.  None had the cachet of Port, real Port, although cheap, highly adulterated fake Ports were cranked out by wineries in California, Australia and other hot-weather zones, as already mentioned.  They formed the biggest part of the American wine market by far.  It was the sugar, the high alcohol, the long warm glow in the belly and in the brain that appealed so much to America, Canada, Britain, Scandinavia.  Forget the rising death rates among Frequent Flyers.

The bus arrived as the squall was spitting its first drops of gelid rain on us.  The shuttle was about half-full.  I heard a couple of foreign voices, British, German or Dutch, among the low murmur of dispirited wine folk.  We got out at the Vinitaly pavilion, dodging the pelting rain and hail.  The once large affair had dwindled to relative insignificance. All the action these days was in Portugal and Spain.  I didn't even have to show my press pass at the entrance.  There were no guards, no Veronafiere people to enforce the usual rules of ingress, egress and payment.  The place was flyblown, unswept.

The stands of all approved Italian regions fit within this one pavilion, with room left over for some of the Wine Czarina's favorite French producers.  Puglia had been banished again this year.  So had Calabria (never much of a presence even before No-Spoofs took over a decade earlier).  Sicily -- always a regio non grata in the orthodoxy of Zluffud and anti-spoof.  Abruzzo was represented by a score of small wineries that produced offbeat, atypical Montepulcianos (the only red grape allowed) that smelled of the barnyard, which the Czarina had extolled as "perfect, honest artisanal wines that would have been impossible during the Industrial Wine Era."  That translated into $20-30 a bottle retail in New York.  Nothing cost less.

As always, Piemonte and Tuscany ruled supreme.  The tightly-wound Barolos, so undrinkable in their first decade that only the rich and the roomy could afford to stash them away, always won high praise.  The more tannic and austere the better.  The same with the grand Chiantis but, of course, to a lesser degree.  Brunello produced good, honest, undistinguished wines -- they were lucky they had a relatively warm climate so the grapes could ripen more fully.  No one praised the Maremman wines highly even though the average consumer, a "spoofiac," would gravitate to them for alcoholic warmth and a bit of residual sugar.

Once the producers had been proud men in well-tailored suits, proud women in cashmere twin sets.  Now they were a scruffy rabble, one step above the gypsies holding up their mercenary infants every ten yards along Verona's streets.  I was afraid to get too close to them until I realized that most were pretending to be impoverished farmers who drove old jalopies to the fair.  The beard grunge on their face was cork, the the gaps in the teeth black gum.  Whenever a visitor came near their polished Italian became a rough local dialect.  They spat on the floor and wiped their nose on their sleeve.  I thought they were overdoing it.  I told one of them so, too.

"Bene, signore, we must be careful that we do not appear too clean or educated," said the producer in flawless British English, "otherwise the Czarina's crowd will accuse us of spoofilation and we'll lose our good reviews and all that publicity. They've forced our yields down so much and the prices have gone so high, we really can't risk offending."  He looked about and lowered his voice.  He leaned toward me smelling of costly fragrances.  "It's not her who's so terrible -- the Czarina's quite sweet one on one -- but her acolytes, her cult!  They're simply mad.  Mad mad mad."

I thanked him and dreamed of a better world, where all tastes could be accommodated, where there would be no orthodoxy but that of making tasty wine that you liked to drink.  Was that too much to ask?  I wondered.  No fanatics, no cults, no my way or the highway.

I went slowly on, barely seeing the hungry-eyed producers and their sales people, who were usually sons and nephews.  I thought of the Czarina, and how earnest and compelling she was in the early days.  When she struck blow after blow for honesty and integrity in wine.  I saw how craven and weak the wine press and trade were in the face of her strength and consistent message.  How they craved direction, a way to direct the retailers and consumers.  Now everyone bent, as if by magic, to her will.  She barely had to leave her apartment in New York.  The world came to her -- samples for review, emissaries of outlandish wine zones, supplicants begging for reinstatement in her good books.  And she was kind and considerate of them in person, even when she wrote in her mocking good humor of their follies and bad wine.

There was a stir across the exhibit hall.  A buzz brightened the formerly gloomy air.  I saw a petite redhead followed by a platoon of eager laughers and agreers.  She stopped at one stand and then another.  Producers smiled as if blessed or sat down crumpled like dead men  in a folding chair.  We neared each other.  She smiled and waved, singing out, "It's so good to see you again!"  Her glasses gave her a bookish, puckish air.  Her streaming red hair made her look as though she was always in a rush to get somewhere. 

Her crew smiled in unison.  She came up and shook my hand and whispered something amusing in my ear.  Captivating, frank, perceptive.  So easy and unpretentious, so joyous to be in the world of wine.  To be at its epicenter no matter where in the world she was. 

"I have so much to tell you!  Please join us for drinks and dinner tonight.  We're driving over to Lake Garda.  You know how I adore Bardolino.  No spoofilation there!"

I said, "What about the bloggers? They blame you for the lack of balance and uniformity of wine today. They say you reduce wine to a science, to a narrow profile of what's  acceptable and what isn't."

She tossed her mane and laughed. "There are only about a hundred or so wine bloggers in the world. No one outside the biz cares about wine. Frankly, nobody ever has or will."

"How elitist!"

"Real unspoofed wine isn't inherently elitist. People in Spain and Italy drink good and bad stuff all the time."

"But no-spoof has scared off Americans right and left. Don't you feel a certain--"

"Now, come on, you know I've heard this a thousand times.  But do come tonight and I promise I'll listen. Honest, no spoof." She smiled winsomely . 

Whatever defences I had fell away.  I grinned and simpered with the rest of them.

I loved the Wine Czarina.  I had always loved the Wine Czarina.

Comments

[Dale Cruse]

BAD SCENARIOS
What if alcohol level went lower rather than higher?

What if the American wine market never took off?

What if no one bought wine at auction?

GOOD SCENARIOS
What if we learned to trust our own wine palates?

What if we could ship wine to all 50 states?

What if the dollar was strong against the Euro?

[TH]

Well, Dale, alternative histories do tend to be dystopian. Which is tantamount to saying, "So! You think you've got it bad now, it could be soooo much worse. This may be the best of all possible worlds after all."

[Ralf]

Olá,
when Hitler had won the war ?
Have a look to all the German names of roads & buildings in New York.
(link via my name)
This vision is from Melissa Gould !
nice weekend from Portugal !
Ralf