The frontiers of wine

and why history is important to wine knowledge

Europe between 1919 and 1939

It seems to me that minds in Europe have never changed. We have a European Union, one currency and common macro-political interests, but European are generally still colonialists regards to the rest of the world and nationalist within the external EU borders.

In a famous pamphlet, Umberto Eco stressed the negative necessity of mankind of creating an enemy in order to have a reason to exists. He meant that without a negative side, we cannot give good reasons for intending ourselves better than someone else. I heard several times that "Europe is a hoax" or "Europe is the enemy of my nation" etc, but how all this relates to wine?

National states are a recent invention, such as social state and welfare.

For millennia human beings had to cope living without pension,s healthcare and public services. Wealth has been created, in the western countries by robbing raw materials or enslaving human lives all over the world and that on a simple point: my nation needs more space and development.

With the Westphalia Treaty of 1648 we see the first developments of nations, based on the principle "cuius regio, eius religio" "whose realm, their religion", fixing the combination state+religion and creating the sense of cultural and untouchable uniformity within specific and well-determined boundaries.

What strikes me today is that this nationalistic implant started in 1648, having had its apex between 1789 and 1945 and having created many problems to Europe (and the globe) is still very much alive today.

All European stated are nor uniform: each single state has huge cultural difference inside of it. This differences are very much alive when we are in our countries, but as soon as we get out of our own little world the next country becomes a big uniform unicum, in which all the people coming from this nations are the same all over the place.

No, it is not like that. Just as in your state, the neighbouring state has as many, if not more, differences than yours and wines can be as different as yours.

It is my opinion that we should, from now on, think in terms of REGIONALITY rather than NATIONALITY, started to label products as product of a region and not of state, going from, for example, Product of France or Product of Italy or Product of Spain to Produced IN France, Produced in Italy, Produced in Spain and enhance the regionality of this product as, for instance, Product of Burgundy, Product of Piedmont, Product of Andalucia and so on.

The enormous European historical heritage cannot be thrown away in name of uniformity and easy-thinking.

The purpose of all revolutions that allowed to pass from absolute states to parliamentary states was to set knowledge free, not just to spread money.

Thinking wine in-the-box is not healthy.

I understand that it is much easier to drink a wine that everyone knows, because you have nothing to think about and the story is already learnt.

If this was not leading to a mass of "wine experts" thinking they know it all, I would accept it, but actually wine knowledge demands the necessary humility to know how the place developed and you cannot understand it just by holding a diploma.

Wine knowledge is a multi-disciplinary subject: reduced to wine tasting and a few data gathering is a shame and lack of respect.

This is why it is due time to stop thinking in big boxes and accept the difficulty and challenge of details.

If you don´t want this, you have to accept to go for mass, even luxury, production.

But understanding luxury is a matter of being polite and well-educated.

You can have all the money in the world, anyway manners maketh the man and manners will help to enjoy your wine consciously and being aware that the history that created it is much more important than our ego.