Like most things, wine goes through trends.
For a while there oaky chardonnay was all anyone wanted to drink, then there was a tipping point and you couldn’t buy an oaked chardonnay, and now people are kissing the barrel a bit again and saying, “hey, that’s not so bad.”
I remember a few years back when people came into the store, saying they had been to BC, or Alberta, or the US and had tried some Australian critter wine, and when it arrived in Manitoba there were people skipping down the street crying, “it’s here, it’s here!” Now the Aussies and their critters are in trouble.
Malbec is having a good run, but someday it too will be so yesterday. The Beaujolais Nouveau thing waxes and wanes.
In past year or two I have noted a pick-up in sweetly-grapey moscatos and other aromatic and just off-dry whites like Gewurztraminer.
One of the truly big hits of recent years is the Italian bubbly Prosecco. It is a beautiful dry or just off-dry refresher, priced between some of the raw Spanish cava wines, and California’s and France’s high-end bottles.
We now see reported in Decanter magazine that the prosecco producers have let these bubbles go to their head. They have announced that production of prosecco will double over the next two years, and quadruple over the next 25 years, to 220 million bottles! The “consumer will shun general sparkling wines for higher quality products” a spokesperson for the producers told Decanter. That wine drinkers have been drinking less, but better – especially in Europe – and can be expected to continue to do so, is probably a sound conclusion. But it beggars belief that the quality, and quality image, of prosecco, can be sustained over a quadrupling of production.
Fads come. Fads go.
Cheers,
The Professor