Was it better before? I don’t know. Quite different, no doubt. Unless you have extracted the cork from it, how can you know, for example, whether this 1889 Montrachet tasted at the end of the last millennium in the company of Pierre-Henry Gagey of the Louis Jadot house was part of the memory of its time when it was foreign to us? At most we can suspect its atmosphere and extrapolate its size.
These space-times open doors and close others. Take the example of the boomers, whose author of his lines is a member in good standing. The year 1955 then allows the parents of these access to a total of 128 stores of the Commission des liqueurs. Branches whose wines display the “taste” of their time. This will appear very little compared to what millennials have, no less than 430 SAQ stores in 2023. Without counting of course on private imports and other online purchases to refuel.
It is true that millennials have not seen the shadow of a Pouilly-Fuissé 1949 from Maison Bichot offered at $2, against $32.50 (22871 – (5) êêê) today, or a $5.75 Taittinger Brut champagne, currently selling for $60.25 (10968752 – (5) êêê1/2). This generation will also always be able to dream of this other 1950 roasted rib sold at only 2 handsome dollars and 15 cents, whereas when you read these lines, they will have to pay 50 times more for the 2018 roasted rib from the Guigal house.
Beyond the prices, however, I remain certain that the X, Y or Z would not mourn the disappearance of the good old Québérac at 85 under the bottle, knowing that they now have access to more than 10,000 products of all formats, all origins and colors, including those oranges and other “super-natural-sulphur-free-organic-energized” wines that have now become the new norm. We have moved in the space of a generation to a new space-time, but of taste this one.
Telling you about this 1889 Montrachet is neither fortuitous nor, I hope, pedantic. He participates in my own space-time as a boomer whose only privilege is to have made wine my job. A beautiful profession which, encapsulated over the last 40 years, today allows us to fly over an era of which it would be tempting to say that “it was better before”, even if it was only very different. A time when any chronicler had access to the greatest wines in the world in a battery of vintages, whether they were tasted on the spot or bought for a pittance in comparison with the insane sums demanded today for these icons reserved for the wealthy. From this point of view, it will appear impossible for budding journalists and other wine lovers to benefit from this space-time that is now over.
Towards democratization
The late 1970s already set the tone. The emulation for wine, apart from a few elitist clubs, has not yet reached that which, at the dawn of the year 2000, will bring in its wake a wind of speculation often exacerbated by a wine press which will do well in spite of itself. raise the auction. If the big bottles have always had the wind in their sails, the fact remains that they are being followed by other vintages that are certainly less prestigious, but which have “found” their terroir while benefiting in the field as well as in the cellar from a qualitative approach. both inspired and inspiring. A small half-century until us which illustrates that it is perhaps already more like before.
Halfway through, we will note a craze for sommellerie in Quebec, even its democratization. To the point where every respectable establishment now has a sommelier or sommelier, with or without an apron, at work on the floor and already offering the best wines of today and tomorrow. Why should they care about the wines of yesterday when all the margaux, barn, rayas, jayer, vega sicilia, petrus, richebourg, masseto, lafite and other conternos are now only accessible to them by leafing through books that distill their memory ? Experiencing them to the full because “they are good in the eyes”, to quote Christian Bégin, allows us to crystallize the era, but also to build a bridge with an offer that has now become exponential. Let’s leave the verbatim of the story to GPT-4, hoping that it doesn’t obliterate a few passages. In the meantime, enough nostalgia, in other times their own fruits. Do we bite them together?