March 01, 2005
Wine on the frontiers of technology
An article in Wired talks about how new world wine growers have been capitalizing on technology to catch and surpass the traditional old world wineries:
To the horreur of traditional winemakers in old Europe, the ancient art of making wine is being transformed by science and technology.
New vino-producing countries like Australia and Chile are becoming winemaking forces, thanks to new technology shunned by vintners in France and Spain — to their detriment.
Posted by Nicholas at March 1, 2005 02:43 PM
I have to say I'm of two minds, I certainly don;t mind better wine and the elimination of the crappy ones - expecially at the lower end of the market.
But, I sympathize with the notion that wine shouldn't be simply a component in an industrial process though where the natural variation is smoothed, beaten and pounded out, where the climate is JUST incidental, and no art or luck is allowed to act.
If you do then it's just alcholic "wonder bread".
Bleh.
You're quite right here: wine is an artform, not a chemical production line. But the mass market in wine is the chemical plant model: most of the money is made on beverages which are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike fine wine.
