Jancis Robinson on how the wine world has changed since 2001.
Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 3:28 pm
Jancis has posted a wonderful overview of recent changes in the wine world over the past six years. She's tied it to the Wine Atlas 6th edition, but you can easily ignore the sales pitch and gain a great deal of interesting information.
Extract:
It has been six years since we launched the last edition, in the eerie atmosphere that prevailed on September 13, 2001 when wine seemed so desperately irrelevant and frivolous. Since then, the world of wine has increasingly established itself as an important generator and, perhaps even more importantly, indicator of wealth. All over the world now, a wine collection is regarded as a desirable, even expected, accoutrement to financial success, just like membership of the right golf club or investment in significant real estate. New interest from Asia, Russia and, increasingly, Latin America has put extraordinary pressure on prices of the traditional trophy wines, the Bordeaux first growths and most sought-after Grand Cru burgundies. At thousands of dollars a bottle rather than a case nowadays, they can now be regarded as part of the luxury goods market, with the additional pressure, hardly a factor in the handbag business, of the investment funds that have been established to benefit from their status as a trading commodity.
But what has changed recently for those of us who savour wine’s more democratic appeal is that wine has become such a popular leisure interest, especially in the world’s biggest consumer market of all, the United States. At long last wine seems to have thrown off its damaging associations with hard liquor and beer in the US to emerge as a wholesome, intellectually and socially nourishing pursuit. This year the US became the world’s biggest consumer of wine, albeit still with a per capita consumption less than half that of the British and a puny fraction of average intakes in the major European wine producing countries.
Her article is on Free for All here.
On the book front, I'm still waiting for Amazon to deliver the 6th edition, but I've paged through it at Barnes and Noble, and it is a wonderful improvement on the 5th edition. You can order a copy from Amazon for a remarkable $31.50 by clicking through to World Atlas of Wine, 6th edition.
[You will also make a small contribution to Wine Lovers Page by doing so.]
Regards, Bob
Extract:
It has been six years since we launched the last edition, in the eerie atmosphere that prevailed on September 13, 2001 when wine seemed so desperately irrelevant and frivolous. Since then, the world of wine has increasingly established itself as an important generator and, perhaps even more importantly, indicator of wealth. All over the world now, a wine collection is regarded as a desirable, even expected, accoutrement to financial success, just like membership of the right golf club or investment in significant real estate. New interest from Asia, Russia and, increasingly, Latin America has put extraordinary pressure on prices of the traditional trophy wines, the Bordeaux first growths and most sought-after Grand Cru burgundies. At thousands of dollars a bottle rather than a case nowadays, they can now be regarded as part of the luxury goods market, with the additional pressure, hardly a factor in the handbag business, of the investment funds that have been established to benefit from their status as a trading commodity.
But what has changed recently for those of us who savour wine’s more democratic appeal is that wine has become such a popular leisure interest, especially in the world’s biggest consumer market of all, the United States. At long last wine seems to have thrown off its damaging associations with hard liquor and beer in the US to emerge as a wholesome, intellectually and socially nourishing pursuit. This year the US became the world’s biggest consumer of wine, albeit still with a per capita consumption less than half that of the British and a puny fraction of average intakes in the major European wine producing countries.
Her article is on Free for All here.
On the book front, I'm still waiting for Amazon to deliver the 6th edition, but I've paged through it at Barnes and Noble, and it is a wonderful improvement on the 5th edition. You can order a copy from Amazon for a remarkable $31.50 by clicking through to World Atlas of Wine, 6th edition.
[You will also make a small contribution to Wine Lovers Page by doing so.]
Regards, Bob