Tempest in a tastevin

Too much noise! Too much clatter! Too much controversy, muckraking and terrorism of varied vinous stripes! My head is ringing.

I've been reading about today's wine world in different media: books, blogs, journals, forums, reviews, leaflets (OK, not leaflets). Words are blitzing about. Yeast. Oak treatment. International style. Volatile acidity. Typicity, for the love of god.

I will take a breath. I will embrace this new, cantankerous, staunchly-opposed world, with its factions and factotums. Some love what they see as talent and opulence in a bottle; others prize unretouched honesty. Some argue that the ways wine is being made now are a travesty and destructive; others that wine has never been better nor more accessible. Everyone's trying to pull back the Wizard's curtain.

No one can deny that the wine commentator faction is drastically split.

I was going to write an article called "In Vino Calamitas," pungent with the irony that this drink that brings us together in broad conviviality should also now be the stomping ground of angry persuasions that tear oenophiles asunder.

But, nah.

I think I'll just read something cool and factual like Jamie Goode's article on phylloxera in The World of Fine Wine.

And have a glass of something I won't reveal. So there.