The Language of Time

Reflection No. 12

What is the difference between sensing an Old World and a New World wine? Think of it like this: in the old days life was about subsistence. Hard work was normal if you wanted to survive. If the land was steep, you made small terraces supported by rocks you carried and pushed against the earth to create just enough flat space to plant on. If you could manage to pay for an animal, it was easier, except then you had to care for the animal too. Everything took time and you did what you had to do. 

Now fast forward several hundred years to today. The New World is new, not bound to the ways of the past. Ours is an era of science and innovation. Our culture empowers individuals to envision an idea and make it happen. Building skyscrapers of glass and steel and sending human beings into the stars are regular occurrences. Modern civilization reflects an entirely different experience of life, which is being embedded in the soil today. It will come through in the wines of the future with its own sense of romance for the past.

Experts will tell you the difference is that fruit-driven wines are usually from the New World, while wines redolent of earth and minerality are characteristic of the Old World. And what they say is true. Sensing history comes as much from the voice of nature as it does from the commingling of the lives of the vines and the people who tended them centuries ago. Who can say what the language of time will tell us in the wines of the New World a hundred years from now? Until then, they belong to the pleasures of the present.  

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