Welcome! I started this up with the simple goal of exploring the world of wine and hopefully doing so in a way that brings the experience home to you. I want to cut out the boundaries between the winemaker an the wine-lover and limit the role of the wine merchant. Imagine going to an art gallery and having the curator stand between you and the Guernica and just tell you about the painting, explain why you'll like it and convincing you to like it, before a critic comes along and tells you what you see as you finally look at it.
Picasso did not likely imagine so many levels of intervention between his art and the viewer. An art gallery is a place for reflective enjoyment and appreciation of works of art and discussion should happen between friends and where possible, with the artist himself. Wine should be presented in that same context; make the merchant into a gallery where the role of the proprietor is to change up the products and offer the best he can find and put it to you for judgement. This will help to eliminate the crap from the shelves of merchants and make our independent wine shops better.
Like a gallery, where opening galas are the best way to introduce a new collection and the artist behind the works to the public, wine can follow the same form. We should expect a wine shop not to fill the shelves with an overload of bottles and expect us to choose at random from an overly intimidating selection of stuff we've never heard of. Show it all in context; put some new esoteric wine alongside a classic dish and display it's merits as a food wine, bring in the winemaker to help us engage with the wine from vine to bottle, maybe even ask for our opinions on what should be on the shelves and what should be scrapped.
My goal is to help with this transition of philosophy. Wine lovers are some of the most highly educated consumers in any market. Now more than ever there are more wine books, mobile apps and publications devoted to helping you make the right decision when it comes to picking out a bottle of wine for dinner. Because of this, people are discovering that the local wine shop might not cater to all their needs. For example, when you read about some obscure region in the south of France that has recently come to light as a source of great, full bodied red wines that sound perfect for your tastes, what are the chances that the local bottle-shop will have it? Not much, so you go online and wait for it to come to you. This reactionary approach to choosing wine does not need to be the future! We can be proactive, we can tell our wine merchants what we want to see on the shelves and make our local shops cater to us! After all that's what they're there for. I am going to begin my exploration of the world of wine by traveling, where possible, to the wine makers who are pioneering the trade and finding ways to bring them to their drinkers. Your wine has travelled on average over a thousand miles to make it to your table and the stories made along the way are bound to be thrilling, so why not hear them straight from the artist who made the stuff?
The merchants can help if they are willing, and they can facilitate the wine makers' outreach to the drinkers, but their role should be limited to that of introductions. "Wine Maker, here meet Wine Drinker. You both have the same first name, perhaps you should chat..."
I will be chronicling my adventures on this website over the course of my upcoming travels in South Africa and beyond and I hope you will become a regular reader in the days ahead. So until my next post, which will have more stuff actually about wine, keep exploring!
George
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