THE ADVOCATE 215
VOL. 80 PART 2 MARCH 2022
In Spain, the most famous Riojas are based on the Tempranillo grape,
grown (of course) in Rioja, blended with lesser amounts from five other permitted
varieties, most notably Garnacha (Grenache). The classifications are
based on a strict aging regime. I delved into those intricacies in a recent column
on Spanish wines.2
Until recently, this was so simply because it had always been so. To quote
an old legal maxim, “The trodden path is the safest.” But it is also the most
worn and, at times, worn out. Innovation was lacking, and the wines suffered.
Spanish Riojas were baked and tired. Italian Chiantis were thin and
acetic. White Bordeaux was oxidized and flat. In many cases, the wine-
making practices of the Old World had become hidebound. To paraphrase
the quote from Elizabethan playwright Ben Jonson that begins this article,
precedents had created vices, or at least sloppy winemaking, as worn-out
tradition had no real competition.
But, channelling the words of Mrs. Zimmerman’s son, Robert, the times
they were a-changin’.
Enter “New World wine”. Embracing an aphorism of Socrates (“The secret
of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but building
on the new”), European immigrants to North and South America, South
Africa, Australia and New Zealand brought many varieties of grape plants
and tried them in those different climates. Some thrived and some did not.
Grapes from different European wine regions were planted side by side,
Riesling with Merlot or Gewürztraminer with Sangiovese.
Wineries in Australia and California experimented with making more
wines of a single variety, like Cabernet Sauvignon, or trying new blends like
Australian Cabernet/Shiraz or Chardonnay/Semillon. California pioneer
Robert Mondavi transformed Sauvignon Blanc wine by partially fermenting
and aging it in oak to give it a smoky overtone (that he called “Fumé
Blanc”—white smoke). Academic researchers at the University of California,
Davis experimented with cooler fermentation to preserve delicate
white wine aromas and with different uses and types of oak for red wines.
The precedents of the Old World were used or abandoned at will. Perhaps
these New World pioneers realized that, to quote Belva Ann Lockwood, “The
glory of each generation is to make its own precedents.”
But innovation cannot run rampant, and not every such innovation is an
unparalleled or even paralleled success. As Coco Chanel said, “Innovation!
One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics.” Good grapegrowing
and winemaking take a certain talent and require adherence to certain
rules, even when looking for a way to adapt those rules.
Great winemaking is now found worldwide and in many forms. It is
famous in the wine world (infamous in France) that in 1976, at what