Old vs New World again

I saw this article in the Wine Times HK about Old and New World wines. It is a topic which has got many wine lovers into passionate argument, but in fact this is not as interesting way of looking at thinks as international vs indigenous grapes.I had certainly had a post on this latter topic before (in the Italian context).

Back to Old and New world wines; the problem is this - if this is an Old World country which is not known for making grape wines, what would you classify it as? If one takes India, then wine making is a recent enterprise and the style is certainly more New World than established, so why not New World? On the other hand, China has been making wine certainly for a long time and the more important point is that the people appreciated it and wrote poetry praising it. So the bit about producing drinkable wine in the aforesaid article was rather condescending. At least the author recognized South Africa for its great wines of the past (I blogged about Constantia in the third month of this blog). Finally I must disagree with the sentiments of the last paragraph. Of course there is no reason to accept faulty wines (which is what I see as being labelled "old world"), but the Parkerisation of wines and chase of fruit alcohol bombs threaten to wipe the character or typicity of wines from different places off the face of the earth - that's not a good thing anytime. That's why I find typicity, indigenous grapes and terroir much more interesting.