What is the future for wine ?

Wine, in so many different ways, gives meaning and stimulates social activity. This is engendered whether the drinking of wine is in order to quench one’s thirst, or to provide the intellectual satisfaction of recognising a particular cru and its vintage at a blind tasting, or simply to give the pleasure of gourmet tasting (accompanied by the discreet euphoria which comes from being slightly drunk). The cultural richness of wine is epitomised in the ‘vins de terroir’, wines which reflect the soil and the area where they are grown. René Brousse, a journalist and wine taster for the magazine Le Rouge et le Blanc, refers to these wines as ‘vins d’identité’, “identity wines”. Because of market pressure, these ‘vins d’identité’, whose production is limited, are threatened today by the ‘vins de qualité’, quality wines, in other words, wines of impeccable technical quality but which are more or less standardised and capable of being made all over the world in ever-increasing quantities.