(Claude Auguste / animated pic: runwayml)
There was once a time when Europe—or, indeed, the whole world—knew pretty precisely what it wanted to drink. Not in the sense of “discovery” or “terroir discourse”, but in a very practical sense: what is on the list, what do you know, what do you order without thinking. White wine was not then an oenological adventure for natural winegrowers, but sheer habit. And that habit had names.
One of them: Edelzwicker. Alsace. Today it sounds like a joke, but once it was a serious proposition. Edelzwicker was the wine for everyone who did not want to—or could not—make a decision. A little Riesling, a little Gewürztraminer, perhaps some Pinot Blanc as well, but usually Chasselas and Sylvaner, all blended together and there you have the cuvée. The name itself was a mixture of aspiration and a wink. Noble, but also pinched together, brought together. In the 1970s and 1980s, Edelzwicker was on every list, from the village inn to the better restaurant. Today? Gone. Almost. Only a few diehards are still keeping it alive. And one version has survived: “Gentil” by Hugel. Edelzwicker that has smartened itself up; smartened up and renamed itself sufficiently not to be laughed at in the present day.
Then: Entre-Deux-Mers. Bordeaux, but white, please. An entire region that once stood for the fact that even in the land of the great reds, you could make perfectly respectable white wine. Fresh, light, a little grassy, Sauvignon, Sémillon and Muscadelle, a touch of citrus, always correct, never exciting. Entre-Deux-Mers was the white wine of reason. You ordered it when you wanted Bordeaux, but did not want to drink a Bordeaux. A compromise—the name says it all. Between the seas, between the ideas. Today, this compromise has largely disappeared from our lives. The market has decided: if Bordeaux, then red. And if white, then domestic, please.
And then there is Gavi. Gavi di Gavi, if one wanted to be completely precise. Piedmont, the Cortese grape, a wine that was once regarded as the epitome of Italian elegance. Lean, fresh, with a hint of bitterness on the finish that passed for sophisticated in those days. Gavi was the white wine of the better trattoria, the accompaniment to fish, antipasti and conversations that became a little too loud late in the evening. For a long time, it remained a fixture in the 1980s and 1990s. Today? Still there, but somehow it has grown quiet. Displaced by everything that is more aromatic, louder, more international and more ecological. Gavi has remained, but nobody talks about it any more.
And finally: Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio. The name alone is an event. The tears of Christ—you had to come up with that. A wine with history, myth and a bottle that looked as though it had been stolen straight from a sacristy. Lean, elongated, often a little too decorative for what was inside. The wine itself: distinctive, sometimes good, often mediocre, but always backed by the grand narrative. You did not just drink it; you believed in it a little. Today, that too is over. Vesuvius still stands, but the tears have dried up.
What all these wines had in common was their function. They were there. They were available. They were part of a system in which wine was not explained, but simply ordered or sold. You knew what you were getting, and that was enough.
Today, everything is different. Wine has to tell a story, has to show its origins, has to justify itself. The old categories, these pragmatic solutions, are having a hard time. They are too simple for an age that demands complexity—or at least claims to need it.
And yet something is missing. This matter-of-factness. This “Get me an Edelzwicker”, with no further questions. This “Bring us a Gavi”, without anyone knowing the vineyard site. These wines may not have been great, perhaps never great. But they were part of an everyday life that no longer exists in this form. The everyday life called matter-of-factness.