Daniele Cernilli asks, and asks us, many questions about what lies ahead in the future of wine.
Does everything in wine need to be changed? Communication, language, and then a diminished importance of origins and traditions? A wine that manifests itself in different ways than in the past and that will have to be Telling with a “pop” style, youthful, simple? Ė this what lies ahead?
There is certainly a lot of talk about it. After many years, there is also discussion about How to set future courses by the major sommelierie associations, which are attended by thousands of people every year. Slightly fewer than in the past, however, and this was the main reason for their reflection.
Of course, the risk of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” may be there. And this is not to regret a somewhat stale way of dealing with wine-related issues, but to point out how some cultural aspects are precisely what have made wine something different from a simple “thing to drink”.
Origins and traditions also stand for the uniqueness of this or that wine, the way to distinguish it, to place its characteristics in a specific context. Then, if within the different events there will also be “dealcolated wines,” one of the possible risks is not also to abandon the origin privileging the production system? Is this not also a way of trivializing and unifying through a kind of “technological overkill”?
I have no definite answers, but just many questions and some perplexity. We are expecting the Vinitaly shortly, we will see what happens. The moment is difficult, the markets very slow, we have discussed the reasons also here with many views you have expressed commenting on the past editorials.
I see a lot of commitment from producers out there, traveling, touring, trying to respond. I wish them well in holding on. As Eric Draven says in the film The Crow – The Crow (1994) “it can’t rain all the time,” and they know what they are referring to.
