It’s been a full generation since wines from the New World first emerged to challenge the supremacy of the classic European, especially French, crus and cuvées. Since then some have established themselves as qualitatively comparable. Many Cabernets from northern California, for example, have proven that they consistently can hold their own with the classified growths from the Medoc, much as select Shirazes from South Australia have done with Syrah-based wines from Hermitage and other appellations in the northern Rhône Valley.
Other New World wines, though, still toil in the long shadows cast by the Old World originals. Tuscany still sets the bar for Sangiovese, as Piedmont does with Nebiollo, northern Spain with Tempranillo, and both Germany and Alsace with Riesling. Despite some claims to the contrary, the same is true with the two Burgundy varieties, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Whether they care to admit it or not, the aim of most ambitious Chardonnay and Pinot producers around the world is to make wines that can rival those from the Côte d’Or. Some succeed sometimes, but very few do so steadily.
For all the sound and fury generated by the emergence of high-scoring, critically acclaimed wines from Australia, the United States, South America, and the rest of the grape-growing newcomers, the world’s classic wines remain for the most part European.
There are, however, two New World classics, wines that may have begun by echoing Old World models but that have gone on to become global benchmarks of their own. Malbec from Argentina and Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand are today the world leaders with those two popular grape varieties. They provide the models that vintners elsewhere look to for inspiration, and set the flavor profiles that consumers recognize and so seek out.
Argentinean Malbec has had an easier road to the top, as this grape, once a significant part of red Bordeaux blends, plays only a minor role today. The only French appellation in which it remains a major player is Cahors, where the wines can be good but are rarely excellent. Vintners in Cahors are trying to make their often rustic wines more supple, aromatic, and more obviously fruit-forward–which is to say, more like Malbecs from Argentina. So too are their compatriots experimenting with Malbec in California, Washington, Australia, and Chile, all places where the success (both commercial and critical) of Argentinean Malbec has led people to try to produce something comparable. If imitation, as the old saying goes, is flattery, the Argentines should be feeling quite flattered.
The situation is a bit more complicated with Sauvignon Blanc. It continues to make excellent wines in the cheek-by-jowl appellations of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé in the Loire Valley, and to be a major part of the white blend in Bordeaux. Yet until Sauvignon Blancs from the South Island of New Zealand burst on the international scene about twenty-five years ago, few people thought of this grape as being capable of producing world-class wines.
The astonishing success of Kiwi Sauvignon, with its crystal-clear purity of flavor and pungently aggressive aromatics, has fundamentally changed how people throughout the wine drinking world think of this particular variety. Even more to the point, for ambitious vintners elsewhere, it has become the model they need to acknowledge. Many try to make wines that emulate it. Others use it as a jumping-off point. But everyone has to deal with it, and as a result wines made with Sauvignon Blanc the world over (including Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé) have become notably brighter, crisper, and more vivacious recently.
Not everyone loves New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or Argentinean Malbec, and no one would claim that they are the very best wines being made today. They may be, however, the most important wines–new classics setting new standards. That’s because, more than any others, they provide evidence that the New World wine revolution may actually be just that–a genuine upsetting of the old guard, and not just an expansion of the existing order.
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