“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,
