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NEW NORMAL

To begin, let`s drink three

glasses of optimism and hope

#1

Constantin Stergides
Dino, as he is known among friends, is a multifunctional
personality, typical for the world of wine. Greek journalist
and wine writer, educator, international judge. Since 1994
organizer of the Greece’s premium wine show, Oenorama
exhibition. He is president-founder of the Circle of Greek Wine
Writers. In his free time he enjoys being on his Harley and
listening to country music.

Will the pandemic change wine? No!

I have been in the wine business for almost tem that was declared “dead” by communi-
40 years, as a wine writer and event organizer, cation gurus. “What is all this nonsense with
and as far back as I can remember there seems AOC, VDQS, VQPRD and Vin de Pays? Who can
to be one thing that never changes: people memorize all this? What’s the point? It’s all too
from outside the industry telling winemakers complicated, it’s not user-friendly, it turns peo-
how they’ve got it all wrong. ple away. Let’s sell wines by their lowest com-
Back in the ’80s, economists decided that mon denominator, their varietal”.
the wine industry’s main problem was wine- New World wines had arrived, and they were
ries’ lack of size. “Your companies are too small, going to render Old World wines “obsolete”
you need to merge and create bigger concerns and “irrelevant”. They were new and exciting,
that can survive the oncoming globalization”, and they were the talk of the town. I remem-
was the mantra. Dutifully, the EU doled out ber the first time New Zealand wines exhibi-
millions to various “cluster programs”, most of ted at Vinexpo: their stand was overrun by vi-
which amounted to nothing much. Did small, sitors and two years later it was designed as
family-owned wine estates disappear? No. a fortress to keep visitors at bay! But as time
There is still some traction in the world of wine went by, New World wines became part of the
for the idea that the typical vineyard plus wi- establishment and despite their considerable
nery operation has no future and will ultima- impact on the old wine world, they did not
tely be replaced by larger units that can attain replace appellation wines. Quite the opposite
“economies of scale”, but all I can see are new is true: passionate growers in Australia, in the
estates springing up all around the world, the USA, in South Africa and elsewhere, are produ-
exception of Bordeaux notwithstanding. cing remarkable terroir-driven wines that not
Then, in the ’90s, it was the appellation sys- only make sense only within the context of an
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