Editorial: Cheers to change - and corks

Rosé is looming as the wine industry's new darling, writes Mark Story. Photo File

As a youngster I remember the elders' wine penchant for any variation on Muller-Thurgau.

I recall it served in crystal glasses to remind the drinker (despite the insipid room-temperature liquid therein) that to drink wine was a privilege.

This I miss, as I do many of its many erstwhile customs. Corks are another. The graft, satisfying slipping of cork and good-times-ahead "pop" were ceremonies of the highest order.

Paradoxically the pop signalled the wine's death knell - but also its post-bottle birth.

On-again off-again screw caps put paid to this while robbing wine of its only aural quality.

It'd be nice to think in an ever-accelerating world that wine's ritual could still trump its mass preservation.

That's a Flintstonian view of course, but charm should beat logic any wine-drinking day of the week.

Either way, the shifting winds of our favourite fermented fruit drink are worth following for many reasons.

Like why do certain trends linger while others die overnight? How are tastes influenced (if not led) by cuisine trends and just how exquisitely wine delineates our soil, sky and skill.

Naturally, the most alluring learning is how these changes in attitude and palate inform us of us.

Witness the past few years' rise and rise of rosé. Back in the 90s (when sauvignon blanc was the decade's flat white) we joked at the advent of rosé which presented and tasted neither red nor white; how dare it pose such an identity crisis.

How wrong were we?

The weekend's Bridge Pa Wine Festival showed once again the varietal is a star on the rise.

And so begins another intriguing chapter in our region's wine odyssey.