Wine: When worlds collide

Orobio Rioja, Ken Forrester Stellenbosch Chenin Blanc and Valle Reale Vigne Nuove Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. Photo / Babiche Martens

Winemakers often have the best results when they combine old practices with new techniques.

Old is good; new is bad," advises Leonard S. Bernstein on the stance to be taken by wannabe wine snobs in his Official Guide to Wine Snobbery. While this was once a widely held view of the world's traditional wine regions, it's been challenged by New World winemaking nations, which have become increasingly confident that they're now able to match or even beat the Old World at its own wine game.

As wine grape vines and their classic varieties are native to the Old World winemaking regions of Europe and the Mediterranean basin, some of its regions have had more than a millennia to hone their grape growing and winemaking skills. With its producers possessing track records that can span centuries, Old World wines have typically formed the cellar staples of connoisseurs and collectors.

Over this period distinctive regional characters emerged, resulting in the majority of the world's benchmark styles. Confident that their experience has enabled them to find the perfect unions of place, grape and style, many Old World countries have enshrined these in law, limiting what grapes can now be planted within demarcated areas and often even dictating how these are handled in both vineyard and winery.

This may have helped protect and preserve these celebrated combinations, but has sometimes stifled experimentation and prevented the adoption of modern winemaking techniques. In contrast, the winegrowers of the New World have had far more freedom to explore their virgin territory and embrace what works for them in both vineyard and winery - something that's even attracted Old World players to plant vineyards there to escape the restrictions back home.

While the Old World's focus has tended to be on the vineyard, the New World's attention to winemaking has meant it has led much of the innovation in this area. Developing techniques that produce more consistently fresh and fruity wines, it's had a huge impact on the quality of everyday drops, which is where the New World undoubtedly excels.

Critics of the more technically made mainstream wines of the New World may complain that wines have consequently become more homogenous, but the world's wine drinkers have proved receptive to their reliability over the unpalatable plonk that was once too frequently found at the lower levels of Old World production.

With their markets eroded by this new wave of wine, recent years have seen the Old World win back market share by employing the techniques of the new. Even that bastion of tradition, France has just created the Vin de France category, which is less prescriptive in terms of winemaking and labelling, as its producers allowed to indicate the grape variety on their labels.

Varietal labelling was something pioneered by the New World, which wine drinkers have found far easier to understand than the regional labelling that's been de rigueur in the Old World, which requires knowledge of what a particular area produces to work out what one might find in the bottle.

The New World has also shown willingness to learn from the Old, employing European winemakers as consultants. Many New World winemakers now work vintages in Europe and are integrating traditional practices into the making of their top wines in particular. Such cross-pollination is highly evident on our shores, thorough the likes of the current exchange between wine students from Central Otago and Burgundy.

It's time to cast snobbery aside. Just as old can be bad, new can be good and both can be even better when they learn from each other.

OLD WORLD MEETS NEW
Old traditions meet new techniques with winning results in these three wines

MODERN STYLE
Orobio Rioja, Spain 2007 $25.99
Spain has been leading the Old World's charge in updating its winemaking as this modern style rioja illustrates. A 100 per cent tempranillo with bright but dense raspberry and strawberry fruit that is laced with cinnamony spice (From Caro's.)

AFRICAN PROMISE
Ken Forrester Stellenbosch Chenin Blanc, South Africa 2008 $28.95
With over 350 years of winemaking heritage, South Africa straddles both worlds like no other New Word nation. New and old combine in this seriously good chenin, with its broad and rich palate-fusing notes of mineral and almond cut by a brisk appley acidity. (From Artisan Fine Wine Suppliers, Point Wines, Bacchus Cellars, Wine Circle, Finer Wines, Wine Direct.)

REALE VALUE
Valle Reale Vigne Nuove Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, Italy 2008 $21
This gutsy fruit driven montepulciano is a fine example of the great everyday drinking that can now be found even in traditional appellations. It's full-bodied and fresh, with black cherries and dark chocolate to the fore supported by an earthy spicy undercurrent and attractive powdery tannins. (Herne Bay Cellars, Peter Maude, La Vino, First Glass, Fine Wine Delivery Company.)