Life after Chardonnay

People have considered wine an indispensable pleasure for thousands of years. But only within the past 150 years have they made such a fuss over it. And it seems to be getting fussier with every new vintage.

Originally, there was just wine. You didn't need any special glasses. You didn't have to swirl and sniff. You just drank it. By today's standards it was probably pretty foul, but to those who considered it a daily commodity, it served its purpose just fine. Oh, and it was cheap. That's because it didn't come with gold embossed, artist designed labels on the bottle. It probably didn't even come in a bottle. If you didn't make it yourself, you probably took an empty jug into your village and had it filled - rather like we do today with our automobiles.

This simple, no nonsense approach to wine worked very well for many centuries everywhere except in France, where everything comestible was elevated to the status of fine art. It was the French who instructed the English in matters enological, and later, the unsophisticated Americans.

And so our American wine heritage is not rooted in those old world no-nonsense traditions, but in French ideals of gastronomic excellence. We entered the fray with a clean slate, coupled with American ingenuity. To be honest, our slate was not entirely blank. We were a culture that had invented soda pop. It was all basically the same stuff - sugared water, infused with carbon dioxide and flavorings. It came in three types: dark, light, and fruit flavored.

Americans didn't embrace wine quickly. And the most popular wines to hit American tables showed a greater affinity to our soda pop culture than to the vins ordinaires of southern Europe. We borrowed generic European names for our sweetish, monodimensional wines; or we gave them fanciful names that meant nothing. Although more than 75% of these soda pop inspired wines were white, they, too, came in three types: red, white, and pink.

The first serious move away from generic table wine in America came by accident when a stuck fermentation at Sutter Home in Napa Valley resulted in a sweet, pink Zinfandel. We were quick to embrace this new form of sweet wine and supermarket wine shelves took on an entirely new color. Connoisseurs may have stuck up their noses, but at least Americans were choosing wines made from winegrapes.

The white Zinfandel craze paved the way for the introduction of sweetish Chardonnays, the like of which had not been experienced in Europe. The Chardonnay craze is still with us, but the wines have improved tremendously over the past decade. Today's inexpensive Chardonnays are far more complex and interesting than any of the previous generation's white Zins. They are also a little less sweet. Again, we've taken an important step in the right direction. And what might that be? Well... perhaps what other cultures have known all along: That wine need not be art or entertainment in order to function on the table. Actually, the coarse table wines of the old world probably make better food accompaniments than most of our inexpensive, overly sweet Chardonnays.

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