Oh, come the hell on, Dr. Pangloss! Are you trying to bait me into one of my into Latin Liquidator mode?
Would that make me a Rabelaisian Rouser?
Hey, you're cute when you get your Latin temperament frothed up!
That there is that "elsewhere" is a blessing. But I wonder if ever-expanding greed and the temptation to conform to some twisted notion of "what the market demands" may not one day narrow that province down to almost nothing.
Oh, come on, harbinger of doom. You know history better than that. Thus did it ever seem to be. People aren't one whit greedier now than they were in whatever epoch you can summon, Manuel. Nor are they more tempted to conform to market demands (I'd say it more as an attempt to make a killing by responding to market demand.).
Wine changes. It goes through small changes at times, glacial changes over a long, fairly static period of time. Then it can change abruptly in a very short period. Styles shift. Seems like the world (or that part of it, anyway) is ending---and maybe it is in a way, yes---but somehow the apocalypse is averted and things go on.
I understand, Manuel. You're lamenting what you know, what you have come to be comfortable with, what you rely on as seeming sureties. But those sureties were never that sure, and none of it was ever guaranteed. Hey, I don't like the Rollandian influence any more than you do, but I see it as something the world will transition through. Until the next anointed Wunderkind comes along and the lemmings all run to the other cliff.
Wine, and wine drinkers, will survive Monsier Rolland. And Monsieur Points Anointer as well. And all the others flim flam evangelists.
I'm delving into a wine history phase right now, Manuel, and it's affecting my view of things. When you know that Bordeaux was once prized for being simple, light colored and flavored, and more like Beaujolais in its description than anything else, and that what we now think of as Bordeaux was what was unsaleable and left over---the old stuff that stayed in the barrels too long. But that all shifted.
Champagne also was sorta/kinda BoJo-ish, occasionally fizzy (which was a negative then, a flaw). And then it shifted to becoming a positive. Only the thing that became what we now know as Champagne was, by our reckoning, disgustingly treacly sweet. Then it shifted, and became dry, because of fashion (and technology).
Things change. Sometimes they change the way we want them to. Sometimes they change the way we wish they wouldn't. And mostly, people don't want them to ever change at all. But they do.
I still say this is the best of times for wine lovers. Maybe not for those who love one particular style of Bordeaux claret, no. Or Spanish Tempranillo, no. But there is just a vast availability fo better-than-ever-before wines from all over the globe, that I have to fall back on the There Must Be A Pony In There belief (otherwise known as Sturgeons's Law): If Sturgeon's Law maintains that 90% of everything is crap, then that means that up to 10% of that everthing is good. And if the general availability, and general quality level, and general volume has risen so high, and there's MORE crap out there-----then there should be more of the good stuff too! Right? Now we just gotta find the good stuff.
Call me PollyAnna.