Celebrating difference

AnDreW JeffOrD exPlOres ‘national character’ in wine (September 2018), a sensory marker that allegedly can transcend differences in style or even site. One such marker is the streak of green leaf or herb that one finds in so many wines from Chile. Jefford wishes that this ‘Chilean cast’ would fade away, and that Chilean wines would ‘efface the memory of plant and leaf and tendril’.

Why? not so that the wines could express nuances of terroir, as readers might assume, but instead so that they might convey ‘purity and charm of fruit’. But these are international traits, frequently overpowering national or regional distinctiveness. It is what makes a great deal of contemporary wine seem homogenous. Jefford elsewhere has disparaged overt, fruit-driven internationalisation. What has changed now? Paul Lukacs, Loyola University Maryland