Style & Substance

Wandering around the wine merchants of London, I have recently noticed a trend in the way these shops are laid out. Once upon a time, the unsaid rule was that wines were displayed by country, as that's what has always been important. You might want “a good French wine”, for example, or something interesting from some “unusual part of the world”. But times are changing. Take a journey to London's more interesting wine merchants and you will find shops laid out very clearly by style and/or grape variety.

The conversation has changed from “where do you like your wine from?” - which I'm not convinced anyone who isn't an enthusiast truly understands - to “what style do you like?”. I don't know about you, but when I'm choosing a wine I usually already know if I want a full bodied red over a lighter one, or a dry and zesty white over a full and buttery one. I'm lucky enough to know which places in the world make wines in those styles, but these new layouts make it even easier to find a wine that fits in to what I had in mind.

The other interesting thing about laying out the wines in this way is that it helps to educate. If somebody comes into a shop and asks the usual “where are your Riojas?”, they get pointed towards the wines made from the Tempranillo grape and/or the medium-full bodied reds so they can see what other wines fit in with their tastes, hopefully making it easier for them to try something new.

This does however open up a couple of questions about terroir. You will hear wine enthusiasts and professionals preaching about how important terroir is - the land the wine has been grown on. The idea is that great wine producers help to impart terroir in their wine, getting the most out of the land rather than the grapes, a feeling of the place, flavours which represent the land. With the huge range of soil types and climate the world has to offer, does this mean arranging by country is intrinsically important?

The other side to the argument is based on modern wine making techniques, which appear to aim to get the best out of the grapes rather than the land. Take Bordeaux in France as an example. Old claret drinkers see this in action with the onslaught of 'Parkerisation'; Robert Parker, an American wine journalist whose points system has become very important in the wine world - his ratings even dictating the prices of wines, especially in Bordeaux - appears to have a particular taste. That his highest ratings go to the more concentrated and fuller bodied wines appears to have caused a change in the way the wines of Bordeaux have been made. Through modern techniques, winemakers have been able to get fuller bodied, more concentrated, brighter fruited wines (resulting in higher alcohol levels) in places that historically have made slightly lighter, more earthy styles.

These modern, fruit-forward styles of wine seem to be becoming much more popular. For me these wines show very little, if any character of their terroir. So has style become that much more important than place? Wine is being made without much character of place and people understand flavour style much more than place anyway. Are we seeing the end of terroir?

I hope not. When I try a wine that has a real sense of place it's exciting. I enjoy drinking the fermented juice of grapes and I want to taste that. Earthy, vegetal flavours, farmyardy aromas (wine is a farm product after all) and complex fruit flavours that change as you get through the glass are what is exciting about wine for me, not just purity of the fruit flavours, which, however nice, is rather boring.

I think terroir character has a place within style, and I believe people should be browsing with style in mind as flavour is really what it's all about at the end of the day. The variety of flavour you get in one place - take Italy as an example - makes it impracticable and unhelpful to lump all of the wines from that country together. And if you like full bodied reds, great – have a look at all these exciting places that make them.