This is an audio transcript of the FT Weekend podcast episode: Food & Drink mini-series — Jancis Robinson on wine trends

Lilah Raptopoulos
Hi FT Weekend listeners. Welcome to the third episode of our four-part mini-series on Food & Drink. For each one, I’m approaching a different expert in the food world that is really good at something, and I’m asking them to teach us about that thing. Today is a great one. I’ve invited Jancis Robinson on to the show. Jancis is a Master of Wine. She’s one of the world’s most esteemed wine experts. She’s been doing this for over 50 years. And lucky for us, she is also the FT’s wine columnist. So today she joins us from France to discuss wine trends — what’s cool now, what we should be paying attention to and why. OK, let’s get into it. This is FT Weekend, the podcast special edition. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos, here’s Jancis.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Jancis, welcome! It is so nice to have you back on the show.

Jancis Robinson
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So we’re talking wine trends. The most obvious trend that we can probably start with is natural wine. What’s going on there?

Jancis Robinson
A natural wine supposedly is a wine to which the maker has not added anything, ideally. So it’s just fermented grape juice. I mean, the first wines for the first few centuries of humanity would all be natural wines. And there were quite a few of them made without too much fuss, sort of in the mid-20th century. But it became a thing when it became a cause. This century, I’d say maybe 10, maybe 15 years ago. And it’s a healthy movement because it’s anti the status quo. It’s particularly younger people taking possession of wine. It’s their sort of wine. And what I love — you’re very often finding a younger generation following their parents or parent into the family wine business.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes.

Jancis Robinson
And it’s very often the case that the next generation wants to try out using less and a sort of copy of a natural wine or a sort of wine, the other sorts that have become a thing like orange wine or wines that aren’t made in oak but are made in clay pots and going back to that kind of traditional thing. So I think that’s very healthy, actually.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I’m curious about this trend of ageing wine in clay pots like amphora and qvevri. Do you mind telling me more about that? And like, would you call it an ancient style?

Jancis Robinson
Yes, it is ancient, but certainly, sort of clay pots and amphora are ancient. And there’s a lot of you can imagine, a lot of geeky talk about exactly what constitutes an amphora and what’s apart from all that sort of stuff.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.

Jancis Robinson
There’s a strong desire from many wine producers today to go back in time and recreate techniques of a generation, or preferably two generations ago. But the big trend really has been away from obvious oak. Oak and wine are very compatible and it lets in a little bit of oxygen, which is great for the wine and blah, blah. But it was slightly taken to an extreme, you know, wines got too oaky. And of course, for every action, there was a reaction. So now everyone’s going, “Ugh, I can’t stand the smell of oak in my wine!” (Laughter) And there’s been a bit of a movement actually back to concrete, which was a favoured material for making wine in like the mid-20th century. And so now it’s almost become fashionable not to use oak.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Mmm. How does the flavour change depending on these different materials?

Jancis Robinson
Well . . . If you’re using oak well, you shouldn’t really end up with a flavour of oak. You should be using it for its physical properties of allowing in a little bit of oxygen, encouraging the wine to settle, clarify and leaching a little bit from the oak of tannin — the sort of chewiness. But, oakiness certainly in the ’90s became so fashionable, people actually like, really actively sought the flavour of oak — a kind of vanilla, spicy kind of flavour. And it was so popular that even in inexpensive wine sort of mass producers were adding bags of oak chips and sort of hanging them in . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, wow!

Jancis Robinson
 . . . in stainless steel vats, you know, to give it oak flavour. But I think those days are over now, especially since oakiness is no longer fashionable.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right . . . And Jancis, can you . . . have you been — I’m sure you have — but have you been to vineyards that are using these amphoras and qvevris and pots? I’m just trying to envision I mean, I looked it up online. It really is like a big clay . . . 

Jancis Robinson
Oh yeah, big!

Lilah Raptopoulos
 . . . pot. Yeah. How big are they? And they’re burying them underground. Like, what is that? Can you help us visualise with this . . .?

Jancis Robinson
Well, it’s different everywhere. I mean, for instance, in Chile and Spain, what they’re doing is going back and using the great big pots that their grandparents used . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Wow!

Jancis Robinson
 . . . Because they couldn’t afford oak barrels. I’m assuming that the pots are buried for temperature control reasons.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Mm-hmm. I went to Armenia recently . . . 

Jancis Robinson
Ahh.

Lilah Raptopoulos
my mother’s Armenian . . . 

Jancis Robinson
Oh, wow!

Lilah Raptopoulos
And they are in a constant battle with Georgia about . . . 

Jancis Robinson
Of course!

Lilah Raptopoulos
 . . . Where wine was invented . . . 

Jancis Robinson
Yes!

Lilah Raptopoulos
 . . . Who had the first winery. And I did go to what the Armenians considered the first place of wine production, and it was in a cave and there were these clay pots.

Jancis Robinson
Yes.

Lilah Raptopoulos
It was very cool!

Jancis Robinson
I’ve seen the pictures now and they keep discovering, you know, something, some fragment that’s older than the Georgians. And then the Georgians discover something that’s older than the Armenians. It’s a bit like in Argentina in Salta there was a competition for who had the highest vineyard in the world. And surreptitiously someone would go and plant a vineyard slightly higher than the previous record one. (Laughter)

Lilah Raptopoulos
Jancis, I’m curious, first of all, are there any other wine trends that we didn’t talk about?

Jancis Robinson
Masses! (Laughter) Just to run through a few that, you know. Lower alcohol — people, everyone’s looking for lower alcohol. So and there was a time when acidity in a wine was seen as a negative . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Jancis Robinson
 . . . attribute. And now, not least because of climate change, people are looking for freshness in wine. So there’s a tendency to pick grapes earlier when alcohol, resulting alcohols will be lower and acidity will be higher.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Can I ask you a quick question?

Jancis Robinson
Yeah!

Lilah Raptopoulos
When you say people want more acidity, partially because of climate change, what’s the connection?

Jancis Robinson
Because it’s refreshing.

Jancis Robinson
Oh yeah, ’cause it’s hotter.

Jancis Robinson
And you know, and a big, heavy alcoholic kind of soupy wine . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Jancis Robinson
 . . . isn’t as refreshing.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Jancis Robinson
Acidity, if you think about it, is the kind of nerve of so many drinks. You know, it’s in fruit juices, it’s in tea, it’s in coffee. It kind of perks you up.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes.

Jancis Robinson
Paler, I suppose wines are getting paler. You know, red wine is no longer required to be deep, deep, deep-coloured. And it’s not a sin to make a red wine that you can see through anymore.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes.

Jancis Robinson
I realise, I realise that I haven’t mentioned so far, of course, the massive trend to organic and biodynamic viticulture. Now we’re moving on to regenerative viticulture where all of the focus is on the soil and getting as many little microbes and microflora and little bugs and worms — everyone loves lots of worms — in the soil. There was a time when the ideal vineyard looked neat . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Jancis Robinson
Put it that way. There was nothing growing between the vines, not a weed, you know. And now the more admirable vineyard looks wilder, you know, it looks more of a mess, in a way . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Interesting.

Jancis Robinson
 . . . and so many, many different things growing between the vines.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So shrubbery and . . . 

Jancis Robinson
It’s like a garden.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Oh, that’s cool. That’s interesting. I’m curious, you know, how your own taste in wine has changed over the years.

Jancis Robinson
Hmm, that’s a good question. I’ve, I never really liked the sort of great big heavy wines, and I’ve, I haven’t shifted from my unfashionable position that the world’s greatest white wine grape is Riesling, because I know it’s got a very strong flavour that some people just will never like. But I love it because it’s very refreshing. It goes beautifully with food, it expresses place, which is something that wine can do more than so most other things that we eat and drink. And it has a great capacity to age and become more interesting with time in the bottle, which is unlike an awful lot of white wine grapes. I suppose I’ve just got, I’ve always been a supporter of the underdog as far as wine is concerned, so any kind of new and undervalued region I try to support. So for instance, if people say to me, so what are the up and coming sources for wine? I’m a big fan of Greece and Portugal, not least because they each have fantastic array of indigenous grape varieties with strong personalities.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Before we finish, I would love to do a sort of quick round with you.

Jancis Robinson
I’ll do my best. (Laughter)

Lilah Raptopoulos
All right, let’s do it. What is a wine that’s not currently trendy, but should be?

Jancis Robinson
Well, English still wine is getting better and better, thanks to our warmer and warmer summers.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Fascinating.

Jancis Robinson
Uhhmmm . . . I think we’ll be seeing more and more exciting wine from what we used to call eastern Europe. You know, Czechia, Czech Republic and Armenia, of course. There are some really good wines coming out of Armenia.

Lilah Raptopoulos
You’re pandering to me. (Laughter)

Jancis Robinson
I am but it’s true. I believe it. (Laughter)

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes, yeah, yeah. What would be a great summer picnic wine?

Jancis Robinson
And what about if a picnic wine for a light red that’s nicely chilled, could be Cinsault,  C-I-N-S-A-U-L-T. A very fruity southern French, great variety that you can find a lot of in South Africa, for instance.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Brilliant. Uhhmmm . . . We’re in a heatwave and if we don’t have wine cellars, what would you . . . How would you recommend we protect our wine . . . 

Jancis Robinson
Oh . . .

Lilah Raptopoulos
 . . . In our homes?

Jancis Robinson
 . . . what a difficult one! Well, if you’ve got room, just stick all wine in the refrigerator.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Really?

Jancis Robinson
Red or white. And unless you’re in a fiercely air-conditioned place, even the red wine is gonna warm up to a good drinking temperature scarily soon. I always . . . down here where it’s pretty hot during the summer, I always put reds in the refrigerator before serving them.

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK. I looked over the other day. My apartment was 80 degrees and I looked at my wine and I thought, Oh no, (laughter) why’d you think about this now?

Jancis Robinson
And particularly if you have leftovers, always, whatever colour, always put the leftovers in the refrigerator. Because if you leave them out, the chemical reactions involved in ageing will be accelerated . ..

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Jancis Robinson
 . . . with heat. So just slow them down by putting them in the fridge.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Jancis thank you so much. This was a total pleasure.

Jancis Robinson
It was a pleasure.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Thank you for listening to FT Weekend the podcast from the Financial Times. If you want to learn more from Jancis, which I highly recommend, I have included a bunch of links in the show notes. You can find her weekly column on FT.com. She publishes daily on her website jancisrobinson.com. My two favourite books of hers are The World Atlas of Wine. It’s a big book full of really interesting geography. She also has this little book called The 24-Hour Wine Expert. I give it as a gift sometimes. It gives you kind of all of the essentials in a small paperback. She’s got a wine course on the BBC. And finally, you can see Jancis live at the FT Weekend Festival on September 3rd in London. I’ll be there too. They are doing a wine tasting with Portuguese wines. You can find me in the audience. There’s a link to get tickets and a discount code in the show notes. Next week we have Natasha Pickowicz on the show. Natasha is a three-time James Beard Award finalist for Outstanding Pastry Chef. She runs bake sales all over New York City and she’s really cool. She’s going to teach us how to be creative and playful with dessert. If you like this episode, please do share it with your friends and tag us. Or you can say hi on social media. You can find us on Twitter @FTWeekendPod, and I’m on Instagram and Twitter @LilahRap. This show was produced by Molly Nugent, executive produced by Topher Forhecz and Cheryl Brumley and engineered by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Special thanks to Alastair Mackie.

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