So just what qualifies as the Old World? Think old . . . really old. These are the places that have been making wine since the happy accident of fermentation first happened. Consider that one of Italy’s oldest wineries, Ricasoli, is still owned and run by the founding family, nearly one thousand years after its establishment in 1141. And two-thousand-year-old vineyards in Burgundy, France, were once operated by Cistercian and Benedictine monks, who took copious notes on viticulture: how to best plant, prune, pick, crush, etc. Vineyards, and intimate knowledge of them, have been handed down over generations in the Old World. With experience comes expertise. The Old Worlders have been in the game for a long, long time.
By comparison, New World regions are relative babies on the wine scene. In the late seventeenth century, European settlers brought high-quality grapevines to South Africa, Australia, and North and South America. From there, the grapevines and the craft of winemaking spread, and today wine is made on every continent except Antarctica. From New Zealand to New York, Argentina to China, exciting wine regions continue to pop up around the globe. They emerge with passion, determination, and much greater marketing savvy than any of their predecessors. However, all of them lack one thing the Old World has in its well-worn back pocket: a road map.
California is a great example of a New World region that is proudly and painfully carving its own path. California is responsible for most of the wine production in the United States, and its top wines garner worldwide acclaim. And yet, compared with their European counterparts, the Californians are just getting started.
Technically, the state has been making wine for about a century. Unfortunately, in the early 1920s, just as things were starting to get interesting, Prohibition obliterated almost all of California’s 713 bonded wineries. The handful that remained survived only by acquiring a license to make shoddy wine for religious purposes. Prohibition was, of course, eventually repealed (thirteen excruciating years later), but it left a deep scar on America’s perception of wine and on the country’s wine consumption. The California wine industry did not truly emerge until the 1970s. It took nearly half a century to restore the number of operating wineries back to pre-Prohibition numbers.
Most New World winemakers and grape growers will admit they have a lot to learn. Despite the challenges of forging industries on their respective continents, they are enthusiastic pioneers. In fact, if you were to visit any New World winery today, I’m certain you’d hear them say they are experimenting with growing this grape variety or that, that they are correcting some huge mistake they recently made in the vineyard, or that they are excited about a new technology or technique they are trying. In other words, they’re still figuring out what works. Fifty years is but a blip when it comes to wine. California, and other New World regions, will certainly evolve considerably in another millennium.