“The closer you get to the equator, the warmer it becomes,” says the Wine and Spirit Education Trust in explaining vinous geography. So true. When you live in the tropics, it changes your perspective on wine.
And the thing about wine marketers, critics, winegrowers, sensory analysis experts, and wine writers is that they nearly all live in temperate climes, usually in or near regions where wine production occurs. Generally speaking “wine appreciation” happens within a limited climactic range and cultural setting. This makes for tunnel vision.
In fact, back in 2013, three professors at Texas Tech criticised the industry for tending to only focus on selling wine to other “wine producing countries.” This remains the case today. The wine industry seems to have a hard time realizing that “even though they do not produce wine of their own,” such places “may comprise lucrative markets for export.” Wow! What a novel idea: attract wine drinkers in the world’s regions and cultures that don’t make wine. Wine producers, especially the makers of entry level to mid-priced wines, need to relax and broaden their horizons.
Earlier this year, Rob McMillan, author of the annual SVB Wine Industry Report told me that “in the past,” in the United States, “we never had an excess [of wine] to deal with” so no one really cared about exporting to the “developing markets” where people might have completely different approaches to and perspectives on wine. Well, that’s changing now that headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle read, “Desperate California wine growers are slashing prices on grapes. No one is buying.”
Arbitrary Norms
I’ve now spent over four years living in Panama City, at 8.98°N latitude at sea level. This has lent me some new perspective on how relative, or perhaps completely arbitrary, the norms of “wine appreciation” are. We are taught precise prerequisites for how wine should be enjoyed. Drinking at “room temperature” provides a good example.
Whose room is this, anyway?
Even the numerous wine publications will tell you that “room temperature” is not really room temperature. Red wines are suggested to be served at 15°C + (say, 60°F to 65°F), whereas most people in developed countries live in rooms of 18-22° C. For me, “room temperature” is about 28-30° C, depending on the time of day. Chilled wine heats up at an extraordinary pace, seemingly defying the elementary laws of physics.
“Room temperature” is thus a totally relative concept, as is “normal” humidity. Here in Panama, my stainless steel sink rusts, a chilled glass of wine will through condensation attract as much liquid outside as inside the glass within a matter of minutes. My glasses fog over the second I leave an air-conditioned car. Parrots swoop comfortably through the air year round in the adjacent public park. Mangoes grow in abundance.
Carbon footprint aside, you can use air conditioning to replicate the temperature of Bordeaux in June or the humidity of the Napa Valley in July, but dining al fresco quickly takes you back to reality. The climate never resembles that of a wine region.
So why do I bring this up? To make two inter-related points.
Embrace Variety
First, all ways of enjoying wine should be acceptable and appreciated as valuable. Wine is too much tied to a geographically proscribed heritage of appropriate “wine culture.” This is the 21st century, not the 18th.
Second, the industry needs to embrace some alterative perspectives, if it wants to sell more wine in new markets. And experiences outside the temperate zone help to illuminate that reality.
Of course, this is based on a belief that diverse wine experiences and ways of serving wine serve as gateways to “finer” wine appreciation. If we continue to promote a “right way” and a “wrong way” of drinking wine, the industry will be alienating a large number of consumers, especially where the cultural norms based on climatic realities differ substantially.
Regarding this first point, I asked Tim Hanni MW, an expert on sensory perception. He confirmed his perspective that “the wine industry continues to perpetuate a sense of exclusivity by emphasising recycled values and concepts that associate wine with elitism, social status, and sophistication. This approach has resulted in the alienation of potential consumers who feel intimidated or unwelcome due to the elitism surrounding wine.” Hanni said that “the industry’s language, rituals, wine and food pairing conventions, and the heavy emphasis on wine education have further contributed to this exclusion.”
I’m afraid that the predominant wine perspective is like telling coffee lovers that the only right way to drink coffee is an espresso. Forget the cappuccino, iced coffee, French press, double macchiato, Vietnamese coffee, and pour over. How much would that limit coffee sales? And fine coffee offers a good analogy with fine wine these days, with the highest price ever paid at auction for a single-estate product happening this year right here in Panama: $10,500 a kilogram for the varietal called “Geisha.” That coffee is appreciated for its phenolics, its floral and fruity notes, the long finish, even its fine tannins, just like fine wine. And the prices show it. Yet try to tell someone there is only one correct ritualistic method to drink coffee, even if it’s Geisha from the single geographic origin of Boquete. Elitism is not an effective sales technique for most of the population.
Wine needs to let its hair down.
So, do we accept ice cubes in wine? Sure. The sparkling wine industry certainly adopted this perspective with Veuve Clicquot Rich, Moët & Chandon Ice Imperial, and Piper Heidsieck French Riviera Edition. No snobbery there. In fact, the classic Champagne cocktail, with lots of ice and a bit of brandy, was invented here in Panama well over 100 years’ ago.
The website of a Champagne specialty retailer explains that “these sweeter Champagnes benefit from both the diluting effect of the ice as well as the addition of fruits and garnishes to create delicious Champagne cocktails. Some fun things to add include mint, ginger, orange peels, cucumber, raspberries. Let your creative juices flow!” Now there’s the spirit!
The sake industry, for another example, has adopted the idea that paired tastings throughout a meal can be accentuated through the very act of temperature changes. Each temporal tasting act brings new flavours, aromas, and textures as the sake’s temperature elevates. Why not so for wine?
Of course, there is a “right” way to evaluate wine for professionals working in “the trade.” That’s fine. Tim Hanni MW tells me this stems from “selling and marketing” requiring “understanding and communicating the product” to “the gatekeepers” in a consistent way and, “sometimes, this requires a higher level of analytical skills, which is what is called a ‘focal vocabulary,’ or group-speak.” A common approach to wine sensory analysis has its commercial merits within the trade.
The industry, however, appears concerned about declining sales linked to failing to attract new consumers. There is a vein in marketing that accepts subjectivity in wine enjoyment. Hanni’s “vinotype” idea, for example, punctuates that different types of people will enjoy very different kinds of wine, including sweet wines that many look down upon. This underlines the exclusive, stuffiness factor that would never accept that people from tropical climes might enjoy wines in distinct way from those who live between the 30th and 50th parallels. As those Texas Tech professors emphasised: “Those countries that are not wine-producing regions are often being overlooked.”
Break a Few Rules
Living in Panama City, I chill nearly all red wines, and then I enjoy noting the distinct features as the wine warms up. I’m not advocating drinking hot wine like hot sake, but going from 14 to 24 ° C can be interesting. It certainly teaches one about tannins, as well as changes in the perception of aromas.
If wineries desire to seek out new markets, then they must loosen up with the stuffy cultural rules that developed over centuries in very limited geographical spaces. No other beverage does this.
I don’t believe in falling off the precipice of total subjectivism in wine: there are good wines and bad wines. But I also don’t believe in the slippery slope. People who don’t follow a prescribed analytical tasting method or serving style won’t fail to find a wine they like because of an absence of specialised knowledge or “proper” service. Hanni says that “variation in taste sensitivity means that what one person perceives as a perfectly balanced wine may taste too bitter, astringent, acidic, or sweet to someone else.”
His perspective embraces the fact the different people will come “to a highly personal and unique judgment” when tasting wine and deciding what they like. He tells me: “An ‘objective’ evaluation, description, or rating of wine relies on the assumption that all individuals perceive wine uniformly, a premise that simply isn’t true.”
In hot, steamy Panama, I generally find a refreshing lack of pretension around wine because there are few, if any, preconceptions. People are open, and they are certainly not scared of drinking alcohol. Wine is perhaps not favoured by the masses, but it is also not avoided. So who cares if they put ice cubes in their Cava or chill their Malbec? All it takes is a bit of suggestion and people in Panama (and elsewhere in the Caribbean basin, India, Africa, and other “developing world” spaces), are totally open to wine in all its forms.
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash