MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Most wine drinkers lose out on a sense of place
We drink most of our wines too young, as a statement about what happened in the cellar, writes Michael Fridjhon
The idea that there might be somewhere else on the planet with the identical soil and climatic conditions as one of the famed Old World appellations used to be the vinous fantasy equivalent of the Northern Passage (now achieved, thanks to climate change) or a wormhole through which to travel to the other side of the universe.
Burgundy, for example, enjoys a continental climate and is located on a prehistoric sea-bed. Its soils are composed of multiple fossil layers, long-dead baby oysters and sea-lilies, out of which Jurassic lime and marlstone rocks were formed. Surely, so the reasoning goes, there must be somewhere else, equally continental and on more or less the same latitude, where there is also limestone and clay comparable to the best vineyards of the Cote d’Or...
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