DAN'S WINE BLOG- A BRAVE NEW WORLD

Friday, November 22, 2019

The world of wine is changing like never before and as I have written previously the rise of wine in a can and 2.0 litre casks are shaking things up just a tad. Well, here are a few other things that may (or may not) shake up the wine world in the near future.

TEA INFUSED WINE: Pernod Ricard have launched a range of wines which have been infused with tea. Calling it, Tea & Wine Infusions, they have recently gone on sale at Dan Murphy’s for $22 a bottle. The range currently consists of a:

• Chardonnay – infused with Egyptian Camomile blossoms, and a
• Cabernet Sauvignon – infused with Sri Lankan Chai.

Just after fermentation, the wines were infused with loose-leaf organic tea. Apparently this was a tricky process to master, taking a couple of years to do so. A bit like how long do you jiggle or dangle the tea bag in your cuppa I guess?

Pernod Ricard believe that this unique combination will enable the drinkers to create some me-time / down-time, relaxing over their glass of tea wine, which sounds better than a winey tea!! www.teaandwine.com

I would love to hear from anybody who has tried this new product/concoction.

A LEGEND IN ITS OWN LUNCHTIME: There is a new red grape variety called, Divico, which is being hailed as a “game changer” for English red wine due to its later blossoming, higher resistance to mildews and moulds. Additionally, according to its creators the Agroscope Research Centre in Pully, Switzerland, it also matures late and produces great quality wines that have abundant colour and tannins.

It is described as an “artificial cross”, (Whatever that means! Is it GMO?), between the varieties Gamaret ( a cross beween Gamay and Reichensteiner created in the 1970s) and Bronner (a cross between Merzling and a Zarya Severa x Sankt Laurent cross also created in the 1970s).

With the first commercial Divico wine being made this year and only three years of production at a research winery it is already being hailed as the potential replacement for Pinot Noir as the producer of “quality red wine”, in Britain. At present Britain only produces 5% of its wine as red wine and only a small portion of that is considered as “quality wine”.

Wow! That’s a big wrap for the “new kid on the block” that hasn’t even been commercially produced!

NEW, NEW WORLD: With Europe having branded Australia, New Zealand, etc., as “New World” winemakers, because we don’t have many hundreds of years of winemaking history – What should we be calling the raft of new winemaking countries such as England, Wales, Belgium and Holland? Should they be called “New, New World” or perhaps “Virtual World”? Because many, if not most of these new growers are making much of their wine from hybrid varieties especially created to deal with the cold (almost frozen) climate and/or the much higher incidence of moulds and fungal disease that exist in these more humid environments.

SO, sometime in the future our children (or, our children’s children) will be able to:

• drink wine infused with all sorts of things as well as tea;
• drink wine made from all sorts of hybrid varieties that we have never heard of (or don’t even exist yet) from places that until now hardly ever grew a grape,
• and what’s more, drink Champagne made without Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, but rather from grapes that aren’t allowed to be used as of today.

I am not a “stick-in-the-mud”, old-world wine drinker who believes that you can only grow certain varieties in certain regions, but you have to wonder where the line will be drawn before it becomes just another beverage and stops being the majestic, magical substance we currently enjoy and call, wine.

Cheers and enjoy some great wines this week.