New- versus Old-World Wine

10:13am Sunday 20th July 2008

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Recently I took part in a day-long seminar aimed at potential Master of Wine (MW) students. It's a notoriously tricky exam to pass and, it seems to me, is undertaken by the mad, the brilliantly gifted or the doggedly determined.

I suspect that those that pass are a combination of all three.

The day began with an MW-style blind-tasting as you might expect in the exam. The second flight was a line-up of three red wines and we were asked to identify the grape variety and the country and region of production.

We were given 15 minutes or so and were then asked to give our answers.

I was right to say Pinot Noir and was feeling pretty confident that I'd correctly identified the wine that was from New Zealand and the one that came from Burgundy.

In short, I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself. However, my confidence took something of a knock when the chap next door announced that the wine in front of us was most certainly from Fixin and definitely from the 2004 vintage.

Blimey. I was impressed. Fixin is a modest appellation in the Côte de Nuits district of Burgundy. It's home to five premiers crus and the total area makes fewer than 550,000 bottles a year. In other words, it's just not a wine you see around every day.

Clearly, this boy knew his stuff. Of course, you would think that, as a grown-up, I would have learnt by now and, as sure as eggs are eggs, it was he who was having the rug pulled from under him some five minutes later.

The wine was not a Fixin. It wasn't even a Burgundy. Nope, this wine was from New Zealand; from Central Otago in the South Island.

I felt bad for my colleague. Such mistakes' are easily made. New wineries and vineyards may be popping up all over the place but despite this growth, I sometimes feel that the wine world is shrinking.

Vine growers all over the world are sharing clones, knowledge and, in some instances, a desire to replicate the styles of a wine they may have tasted thousands of miles away.

All of which makes something of a mockery of our persistent use of the terms New World and Old World.

I came a cropper myself quite recently when I believed the Errazuriz La Cumbre Shiraz from Chile to be a Syrah (the French spelling of Shiraz) from the Rhône valley.

For many it seems inconceivable that I would have made such an error but let me try to defend myself.

The wine had the same vibrant purple appearance that I associate with Rhône Syrah. It smelt of blackberry, spice, bacon and pepper. Again, all scents that I associate with France's fine Syrah wines.

The palate was balanced with wonderful structure and powerful fruit. What clues were there that this was a Chilean star as opposed to a wine from the Rhône?

When I tasted it again I could clearly see that this was a wine that had considerable ripeness. The tannins were evident but perhaps softer than some of France's examples. But let me tell you, it's easy to be clever when you've seen the label. I can't tell you that if I were to find myself tasting that wine blind in two months' time that I wouldn't, once again, misplace it by several thousand miles.

The problem is that with the terms New World and Old World we have come to make an assumption of style and this is the real mistake we have made. More and more often I see producers in the western hemisphere talking in their marketing material about their wines being made in a New-World style.

Fly to Australia and the winemakers there are all talk about the heritage and history of their wines and their ability to match, if not exceed, the wines from Old-World Bordeaux.

It's all terribly confusing and I haven't even tackled the rather thorny issue about the appropriateness of referring to a country such as South Africa, which has had vineyards since the 1600s, as New World.

I think the old/new world split in the wine trade is increasingly misguided and, while I can't see the distinction being dropped completely, perhaps we should use it with more forethought.

The Oxford Times Wine Club has this week provided you with an excellent opportunity to have a modest comparative tasting of your own with wines from South Africa and France in the mix. Can you tell the difference?

Click here for The Oxford Times Wine Club offers.