I know we don’t like to talk about age, but wine is old. Seriously old. It even predates written history. The goss on the street is that some ancient peeps (we’re talking 5,000-6,000BC) around Georgia and Armenia, where wild grapes were plentiful, kept their gathered booty stored on the shelf for a little too long and… voila! They tasted funky and made them feel likewise.

This wine caper then caught on – fast. The Greeks and Romans even had Gods dedicated to wine. And as the Roman empire spread, so did wine production. It was the Romans who brought vineyards to France, Spain and beyond.

Fast forward to the current day and when discussing wine you’ll often hear the expert folk use the phrases ‘Old World’ and ‘New World’. This is a way of loosely describing where a wine comes from, and it is based on when wine production first turned up in a country’s history.

Unsurprisingly, the ancient grape growing regions centred around Europe and the Middle East, where strong winemaking traditions have developed over centuries are referred to as ‘Old World’. While ‘New World’ refers to countries who have come to wine much more
recently, like Australia, the Americas and parts of Africa, as well as brand
new contenders – like China and India

The Old World and New World also talk about the names of wines very differently. In the Old World, wines are named after the location where they are produced. For example, a sauvignon blanc that was made in the Sancerre region of France is always called a Sancerre – not Savvy B.

In Australia – a New World wine country – we like to talk about wines according to their variety. We look to buy a bottle of shiraz or a chardonnay, not a bottle of ‘Barossa’ or ‘Margaret River’.

But this is not just aboutgeography and history. These terms also refer to how ‘old’ traditions have dictated how wines are made, and how the ‘new’ guns have been able to ignore those traditions to forge new paths. So let’s take a closer look at what Old World and New World really mean when it comes to wine.

Old World Wine

‘Old World’ typically refers to wine producing countries around Europe and parts of the Middle East, and generally includes:

France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Germany, Greece Hungary, Israel, Romania, Slovakia Switzerland, Georgia, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Cyprus and England (yes! England! Leave your judgements at the door people because, after a bit of a hiatus on the global wine scene, the south of England is tipped to become the next big thing in sparkling wine production – which makes sense when you think about its geographical proximity to champagne and similar chalky soils).

The main thing about Old World regions is that they have been making wine for centuries. And over time, the knowledge and systems that have developed and been passed down over generations has resulted in traditions so strong that in many cases they have now become highly regulated rules and procedures.

While here in Australia you can buy land anywhere you like, and plant any and all the grape varieties you want, and look after them however you see fit, this is absolutely NOT the case in many Old World regions.

Regional industry groups determine and regulate just about every stage of wine production for our Old World cousins. These regulations can include:

• what grapes can be grown
• how many vines you can have
• exactly where and when they can be planted
• whether or not you are allowed to irrigate them
• when they can be harvested (minimum and maximum levels of ripeness)
• how many you’re allowed to harvest – regardless of the size of your crop
• how they’re harvested (by hand or mechanical harvester)
• how the fruit can be handled once harvested
• and how it can be turned into wine (how it is pressed, which yeasts are used for fermentation, whether oak barrels can be used or not, how long it must age before it can be released for sale, the list goes on…)

While this may all seem like bureaucratic overkill, there is an upside. Such regulation ensures the quality and consistency of wine from a particular region, and also that the wine will clearly reflect the location it comes from. That is, the wine will be true to it’s ‘terroir’ – the exact ‘territory’ or piece of land that it’s grown on, which also encompasses the influence of the weather and soil quality for that site and particular year.

Think of a regulated Old World wine producer like you would a fashion designer. Each collection shown remains true to the style of the house, with some seasonal changes.

France was the first country to implement a regulatory system, which they call the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC), in the early 1900s. And other countries – most notably Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal – quickly followed suit.

What all this regulation means for us wine drinkers is that when you buy a Burgundy or a Champagne – or a Rhine riesling or a Spanish rioja – you can be assured that every bottle from every brand has been made to the same strict standards required to be worthy of its name.

All this regulation has another impact too – on style and flavour. Not only is a wine’s terroir influenced by geographic location, but also the historical and traditional winemaking style that is common to that region: that is, the decisions made at each stage of production (as per the bullet points above).

As a result, Old World wines tend to be of a style that is often described as elegant, earthy and acidic, and high in crunchy tannins.

New World Wine

While Rome spread wine throughout its Empire prior to 500AD, it was European colonisation during the 15th – 19th centuries that spread the knowledge of wine production even further around the globe. Wherever there was land deemed suitable for vineyards, grapes were planted!

‘New World’ typically refers to wine producing countries that include Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, China, Vietnam, India, Uruguay, Brazil and Mexico. (Bet you didn’t even know some of those countries made wine, did you?!)

In general – and this is a BIG generalisation here – New World countries have warmer climates than their Old World cousins (but don’t tell that to Tasmania or the South Island of New Zealand). And warmer climates tend to produce grapes that ripen faster, so you get wines that taste juicy, more full-bodied, fruit-driven and higher in alcohol.

Wines like this are sometimes talked about as being ‘highly extracted’, ‘over extracted’ or concentrated ‘fruit bombs’ – which is just a way of communicating that they have an overall level of intensity much higher than their Old World counterparts. (But again, don’t mention this to Tasmania, Adelaide Hills, Great Southern, Orange… oh, the list of places in Australia this doesn’t apply goes on and on!)

The other significantly different thing about New World wines is that wine producers get to exercise as much artistic flair – or bombastic arrogance – as they dare, as there’s no one telling them how they have to do things. So you can have multiple styles and varieties of wine, and wine blends, all coming from the same region.