It's the End of the Wine World As We Know It

And no, we're not talking about the damn merlot grape. We're talking about the end of the domination of Burgundy in wine circles. With more producers in the New World (that's outside France and Europe for non-wine snobs), using modern techniques and willing to take chances that the French are not allowed by law or conscience to take, the New World wines are going to dominate the market like never before.

And France wonders why their share of the wine market has dropped. It could be simple economics. When producers have figured out ways to reduce overhead and costs associated with growing, they can pass the savings on to the consumer, even with better vintages and delicate grapes like pinot noir. Pinot noir is a notorious grape to grow, but a growing number of California, Oregon, Washington, Aussie, and New Zealand winemakers have figured out how to do so magnificently.

And they can do it undercutting the Burgundies all the same.

Empires are falling. Everywhere, the old order is undergoing change on a scale, and with a speed, that no one could have predicted only a decade ago. Let me first give you an anecdotal example. Lately, pinot noir has been much on my mind. It always is, but it's been more pressingly so than usual. As previously chronicled in this column, I was in New Zealand's Central Otago district - pinot noir country - as well as Australia's Mornington Peninsula and Tasmania (ditto).These visits included two pinot noir conferences as well as independently visiting producers. So I've been steeped like a tea bag in pinot noir. Anyway, I returned home and found myself having lunch with a Burgundy shipper I've known for decades - a good, honest guy who's in the top echelon of Burgundy shippers. It was just the two of us, so the conversation was, as the State Department likes to say, frank and honest. I told him, hyperbolically, that Burgundy was dying. (Actually, what's happening is that the less prestigious subregions such as Cote Chalonnaise and Maconnais really are declining, with increasing bankruptcies. The heart of Burgundy, the famed Cote d'Or, is so far unaffected.) As you might imagine, this took him aback. I said that although Burgundy was hardly going out of business, it will certainly steadily lose business, pointing out that California alone has the same pinot noir acreage (24,000 acres) as Burgundy, never mind Oregon, New Zealand, and Australia. I told him that I had recently recommended in this column a California pinot noir that - if I were tasting it blind - I would have sworn was a really good Bourgogne rouge. And it sells for $16.

That's $16 for a good pinot noir. I can drink to that!