It was the English writer Hugh Johnson who coined the phrases of Old and New World in a wine context. Broadly speaking, wine’s Old World equates to traditional Europe, while the New World encompasses those countries that measure their winemaking heritage in hundreds, not thousands of years. These countries, whose wine industry was established by people from wine’s Old World, include the United States, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina. Speaking so generally it’s almost dangerous to do so, I might suggest that much of the technical innovation that has seen the production of large-scale wine brands of high quality but cheap prices was initiated in the New World. Again, being extremely general, we owe the established winemaking traditions and fundamental techniques to get the best out of our most commonly used grape varieties to traditional Europe. Today, technical expertise in wine is shared more widely than ever before, so it’s possible to find so-called New World styles made throughout Europe. It’s also fashionable for New World winemakers to attempt to imbue their wines with the sort of rustic character than many attribute in broad-brush fashion to Old World wines. In other words, in this day and age, winemakers can make a clear choice concerning how pristine and spotless (New World-ish) or how rustic, savoury and complex (Old Wrld-ish) they want their wines to be, regardless of where they’re growing their grapes.
