In Spain we drink today little more than 15 litres per inhabitant and per year, almost four times less than in France. A young generation of producers is starting to recover the wine-making culture, discredited by bad practices, prejudices, and lack of support
half a century Ago, spaniards consumed wine common, of poor quality, mixed with soda to make it more drinkable. Not it was called tinto de verano: it was the red wine of the year. In a country still very agrarian and poor, with a lot of manual work, the wine was an add-on heat required in the daily diet, but not a pleasure. Sherry went to England and the good wines of Rioja, the minority bourgeois, Bilbao, Madrid and Barcelona.
the development raised the standard of living but the vast majority do not took for going to the wines better and more expensive because there is no attachment social the drink: shot up the consumption of others, such as the beer or the popular whiskey segoviano.
Today is consumed in Spain a little over 15 litres per capita per year, almost four times less than in France and three times less than in Portugal, our two neighbours. Something unheard of in one of the countries with the longest history of wine. The loss of the habit of consumption has been much more fulminant than in any other european country because they have added other causes, just related to the weakness of our wine culture if we compare it with the one that exists in other places.
There is a lack of culture in the consumers, that for generations endured that came a mediocre soda that they left in everything they could, and lack of culture of the producers, who do not were largely, unlike France or Italy, wine-growers at the same time that winemakers, with a direct contact with the vineyard and its traditions, but cooperatives with a social purpose and not qualitative, or a big warehouse industrial (that’s his old name of la rioja) in the last years of the TWENTIETH century, governed by men of business are usually very unaware of this culture of craftsmanship and ancient, is dedicated to making wines in technology, unbalanced, heavy, hard, way to not the simple and subtle enjoyment of its consumption, but to start high scores of distant gurus american.
a Lot of expensive wine, a lot of bottle pesadota and ostentatious, a lot of wine that requires a great effort to take a second cup because it is hard, tannic and unfriendly. Above, there emerged a generation of sommeliers and promoters of the wine that he cultivated a language that is abstruse and pretentious to describe the wine and its tasting -the famous retronasal – and convinced the public, particularly the young, that the wine was something quite unintelligible to experts and snobs. More incentive to switch to rum and coke…
The more veteran writer of Spanish wine, Jose Penin, has a better opinion of those wines of 20 years ago, but comes to a similar conclusion about the fall in consumption: “I don’t think it a coincidence that the largest decline coincides with the emergence of quality in the 90’s and first decade of the present century. It is possible that the consumer routine of table wines, reacted to the low to check the difference between your wine of mediocre quality and DO, but without enough cultural maturity to understand that the best wine has to be more expensive. Part of this sector definitively abandoned the wine, brewing by the low quality”.
The culture of the wine, is often confused with something more simple and basic, and without a doubt more important: the love for the wine, the taste of the cup of red wine having dinner with friends, “I don’t know to describe it or explain it, but I know what I like and what not”. The love for the wine is the first step towards the recovery of the culture of wine.
wine Culture has, who, besides enjoying your cup, you want to know something more of its contents and its origin (because it is aware that it is a natural product, agricultural, whose characteristics depend on the soil and the climate, and the grape that has been born), you have a certain awareness of the role of wine in the mediterranean way of life in which culture is part of, and appreciates and shares the sense of tradition, of the company and of the moderation that define that culture.
The Administration has helped little, who equated the wine with distilled spirits, hard in some campaigns antialcohólicas as promoted by the minister Elena Salgado in a time of Shoemaker. But if you consume little wine, but increases the alcoholism, it is clear that the problem is not the wine.
The way to alleviate this situation is to start to give access to the wine through tastings of wines, friendly, fruity, easy to drink, in several frameworks, including one very important one: the University. Some years ago an attempt to do so in the universidad Complutense of Madrid was thwarted by his chancellor, with the pilgrim but revealing argument that “the university is not to promote alcoholism.”
In general, the Administration has not helped anything, and the sector is going to have to take on the challenge. There is a new generation of winemakers able to submit labels more sympathetic, less intimidadoras: it is a first step to standardize the wine, and then the more interested because iran moving towards wines that are more serious and ambitious. Yes: wine, blue or cannabis is not only light-headed partridge.
we Now live in an exciting time because this younger generation of producers and consumers, although it is still a minority, has become the eyes of the best traditions (there are many bad manners in the guise of traditions also), who has traveled to the places in the world where that movement is more advance. In order: it has known how to lift the head and the view. It starts to make houses on the foundation and the wines by the strains. And people will discover that other wine is possible. And is reborn a culture.
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