Sipping in a golden age
Thursday, 15 July 2010

Wine world's grim days are gone

I've been thinking we might be living in a golden age of wine. That's not to say that things won't get even better in the future, but I think it's clear that, if we look back 20 or 30 years or more, the wine world was a bit grim for ordinary consumers.

Buying wine in Ontario has been transformed: those dark, institutional LCBO stores that made buying wine seem close to a moral crime are a memory for some, unknown to others.

The selection has expanded out of sight, and quality is on the up-and-up. In the next edition of my annual guide to the 500 best-value wines in the LCBO, where I score wines out of five stars, hardly any are rated under four stars. Either I'm getting more generous -- and that would be odd, because in the rest of my life, I'm getting grumpier -- or the overall quality of wines in the LCBO has improved in the last year or so. Let's go with the second option.

(This will provoke e-mails from the readers who protest when I write positively about the LCBO. But the LCBO is the reality we deal with, and until that changes, we should acknowledge the things it does right, as well as criticize its shortcomings.)

There's risk in talking about "golden ages." Looking back, we can see many "golden ages" of wine that don't look so glittery with the benefit of hindsight. Take the so-called "golden age" of Bordeaux in the mid-1800s. The wines wouldn't stand up to scrutiny today, not least because winemakers added syrah from the Rhône Valley to boost flavour, body and colour. But there were no appellation laws to forbid it, the practice was an open secret, and people seem to have enjoyed the wine.

I don't recall much talk about "golden ages" of wine in the last few decades, though. Until the 1980s, most wine was mediocre at best -- and that applies to wine from France, Italy, and Spain, not to mention regions beyond Europe. Most New Zealand wine made before the 1980s was barely drinkable, and a lot was fortified for this reason -- as it was in places like Australia and South Africa.

But then came the glorious wine revolution of the 1990s. More attention was paid to grape varieties and planting them in the right places. Winemaking was cleaned up. Quality rose everywhere.

It wasn't a totally rosy picture. There was still a lot of poor wine everywhere, but the proportion of good wine grew significantly. We now have access to a wide selection of styles and varieties from many countries, and that's from the LCBO/Vintages alone, which together release more than 8,000 different wines each year. Many thousands more are available from private stores, Ontario wineries, online retailers and directly from importing agents.

If it smells like a golden age and tastes like a golden age, just maybe that's what it is.
Last Updated ( Thursday, 22 July 2010 )