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| We call it the Old
World but during the course of civilization Europe developed thousands
of years after Mesopotamian culture in the area known as the Fertile
Crescent, between the Black Sea to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to
the south and West and the massive mountain ranges that cover the
northern regions from what includes today Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Grapes
were on the earth before the earliest civilizations but it was in
Mesopotamia that the spiritual and economic force of the grape, as
wine, came to be. Later, and with deepest regards to Classical Greek
and Roman cultures, wine spread throughout Europe, from the most
eastern to the most western reaches.
No one can claim with certainty when and where any of the the approximate10,000 grape varieties of the winegrape species Vitis vinifera were first developed and cultivated but it is clear that a few are both venerable and venerated. A small few that readily come to mind are Riesling, Pinot Noir and Shiraz (Syrah), but these are just a drop in the vast sea of winegrapes that spans nearly every continent. (Grapes for wine cannot be cultivated in the furthest northern and southern reaches of the globe.) Among the more famous grapes for wine is the Cabernet Sauvignon, but to illustrate how difficult it is to classify winegrapes either as superior or as more noble than others, Cabernet Sauvignon is believed to be the offspring of two equally important, but lesser known, grapes--Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. In each case, the lesser known grapes are capable of putting forth, in the hands of good winemakers of course, well-balanced wines that have marvelous attributes, especially when pairing them with food. In fact, in the Old World it is common for regional and local wines to be particularly suited to the regional and local cooking. In a series of events that began in Rome in about 121 BC, and then took flight in Portugal in the 16th century, Old World wine cultures figured out the powerful economic value of wine and so governments took steps to codify, control and create conditions intended to remove fraud and to ensure wine quality. Today the European Union (EU) takes on the role of clarifying and guiding its market member European states so that when a wine produced in the Old World says on the label that it is from a particular place in Europe the information needed to categorize and to generally understand the wine has already been put on paper. If enough pedigree but bad wine that goes against EU standards somehow appears on the market you can bet the governing body will react; too much is at stake, economically and culturally, for Old World wine cultures to be complacent. Learn about the New World of Wine |
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