The Dilemmas of Wine Education

Jason Wilson asks an important question that I think will become more pressing as the wine industry (and the climate) continues to undergo significant change: Is It Finally Time for a New Wine Education?

His question is driven by two observations:

(1) Dedicated wine lovers are exploring new regions, varietals, and winemaking styles and showing less interest in so-called noble grape varieties from established regions; and

(2) Wine education continues to focus on the historically important varieties and regions.

It has been many years since I took my certification classes or looked into wine education so I have no first hand knowledge of current trends; I will take his word for it that (2) is correct. Furthermore, (1) certainly seems to be true given what is being stocked at wine bars and retail shops around the country.

Should wine education place less emphasis on traditional wines and focus more on emerging regions, new styles, and under-the-radar varieties?

If this sudden interest in País or wines from Croatia is a passing fad, then wine education should probably ignore it.  But I doubt it is a fad. Winemaking knowledge and improved viticulture have made it possible to make excellent wines in disparate locations across the globe. And the many differences that wine exhibits are what makes it attractive to curious people. I don’t think this interest in differentiation and variation is going away. And of course climate change will continue to disrupt traditional wine regions as they scramble to adapt.

However, although our interest in variation will not flag, which variations are significant and which are fads will be impossible to predict. Instability is the new norm.

But this poses a problem for wine education that any canon facing change must solve—what do you add and what do you cut?

Despite the increasing interest in emerging regions and lesser known grape varieties, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Barolo, and to a degree, Napa still remain benchmarks. Most of these benchmark wines are too expensive for most wine lovers to enjoy. That is a serious problem for something that sets a standard—if you can’t taste it you can’t know what standard it is setting. But the fact remains—although there is much quality wine to be found, none of it tastes like Burgundy, Bordeaux or Barolo. You can’t really claim to know wine if you don’t have some acquaintance with these benchmarks.

That said, France, Italy, and the U.S have many lesser-known sub-regions that historically haven’t been important. But it is in many of those regions where new and exciting trends are developing. The list of important wine regions is expanding; no one is dropping off the list.

On the winemaking side, the choices about what methods to include or cut are equally difficult. For many producers, winemaking hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years. But others are deeply into wine technology with new products constantly being developed. It’s still important to know the details about barrel aging even though many newer producers are using less oak. One the other hand, if you’re not teaching how natural winemakers are able  to make clean wine while minimizing use of S02, you’re missing one of the most important developments in winemaking over the past decade. The methods that need to be taught are expanding not decreasing.

The content of wine education is driven largely by the wine certification programs. In order to have a coherent program in which certifications mean something, you need a body of knowledge that is consistent across the various programs. If people in the wine industry are to be able to talk to each other they need a common frame of reference. If we only know the peculiar niche we’ve chosen for ourselves the wine community will not persist as a community. The main driver of a conservative approach to curriculum development is this need for standardization. Not to mention the fact that study materials cost a lot to produce and the more you have to revise them the greater the cost.

And change requires convincing a lot of people in positions of power who received their education many years ago that what they know is no longer as relevant is it was in the past.

There is a reason why students who study music at university still study Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven despite all the new music that has been composed since the 18th Century. In philosophy we still read Plato and Aristotle; in literature, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and the the Brontë sisters are still read. The reason is that some human problems don’t go away with the passing of time. Some ideas transcend time and place because they continue to help us frame modern problems.

The inspiration one gets from realizing that today’s pressing problems were not all that different from the problems people faced 2000 years ago is a important lesson to learn, and it can only be learned by engaging with those texts.

Can something similar be said for maintaining the canon in wine education? Traditions have always been important to wine lovers and those traditions cannot be sustained without an active program of education. This is especially challenging because, unlike literature, philosophy, and the arts, the wine made by those traditions we revere is no longer available. It can survive only in the imagination.

And so the problem persists with no clear solution. We can’t chase every trend but neither can we ignore the changes going on around us. This is precisely the debate Heraclitus was having with Parmenides 2500 years ago when he said “no one ever steps into the same river twice.”