In the ancient world, the cost of the overland movement of goods was between ten and thirty times that of ship-borne transport. It’s the reason why wine-growing regions located within easy reach of these great watery highways were very early on able to establish trade routes that brought wine to places where the vine could not, or had not yet learned to, thrive. With trade in goods came exchanges of peoples, languages, ideas and cultures that enriched and fertilized communities which otherwise might never have come into contact.The trade in wine, along with grain and oil, meant big business — and still does.
But not all wine enjoyed this kind of mobile, cosmopolitan lifestyle. For most of history, wine tended to stay put, consumed in the homesteads, wayside inns and cafés of the villages where it had been farmed, fermented and matured. It’s helpful, I think, in examining the way wine is sold, served and generally made use of in today’s world, to bear in mind that there are now and have always been two wine cultures existing simultaneously. One derived from its history as an expensive, imported luxury good, cherished by urban elites and lending itself to displays of gourmandise and connoisseurship; a second, serving as an important but rather homey and ordinary aspect of daily life and solid ground of familial and neighborly sociability. Call it wine’s version of Upstairs, Downstairs.
Just now one of the features animating the contemporary wine scene is a reappraisal of historic, stay-at-home wine culture, with its appealing emphasis on natural and traditional methodology and a not-easily-dislodged belief that the more highfalutin’ wine gets, the more suspicion attaches to it as a product of chemical adjustments, slick marketing and general bamboozlement. It’s a timely development, if not long overdue. The U.S. can’t boast a native, centuries-old, downstairs wine culture of its own, but this doesn’t mean we can’t choose to adopt some of the values and practices we admire from places that do.
For a start, that might mean turning our attention to the pleasures of discovery, rather than display, exploring less than familiar or even unheard-of regions and their seemingly obscure varietals. The idea isn’t to turn this into a subject of study, it’s to spend a little time learning what it might like to feel at home in a place that isn’t your home.
Next, we can try setting aside whatever assumptions we’ve created for ourselves about what wine is supposed to taste like, in favor of an open-minded and open-ended approach that judges each glass on its own merits. Next, let’s unburden ourselves of the notion that wine is something other than an everyday beverage, a routine and unremarked-upon accompaniment to every meal, which, consumed in moderation is healthy, appropriate and natural.
Lastly, let’s ease up on the obsession with pairing, shall we? Which has, I fear, become more of a hindrance than a help. In deep-dyed wine cultures, the reds and whites (and shades in-between) native to the community were poured with everything on the table. In places where there existed a modest spectrum of things to choose from, one would naturally make choices, but, really, your home is not a restaurant.
And it’s very good thing too.