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Rieslings taste like fruit salad, Nebbiolos like strawberry jam and Sangiovese like sweet glycerine. Cabernets become Merlotsofties, Syrah chocolate syrup.... Where has it gone, the complex minerality of the Rieslings from the Rhine and Moselle, the unruly wildness of the Rhone, the animalism of Bordeaux, the provocative astringency of Barolo? What's wrong with wine?

"You know," a famous winemaker from California once explained to me, "there's an inherited taste and an acquired taste. We in the New World are so successful with our wines because we go all in on the inherited taste." Sure, it popped into my head, even in the days of the "hunter-gatherers" our ancestors learned the difference between ripe and unripe fruit. Instinctively and nutritionally quite correct, sweet fruit is associated as ripe and good. What child likes "sour" or "bitter"? Well, the world is not only made up of children. When we leave the infantile world of sweet milk, porridge and fruit, we learn to deal with differentiated flavours and develop "taste". It is not at all necessary to dip the baby's dummy into wine from time to time, as is customary in winegrowing households. Curiosity and the desire to discover alone tempt us humans - if socio-economic circumstances allow it - to search for exciting nuances of taste and to learn to appreciate diversity. But if that is the case, why does everything taste like kindergarten today?

1. Thesis. The producers' greed for money. Prices were doubled and quadrupled. For the traditional customers, the game became too expensive, so that today the wines are increasingly bought by nouveau riche status symbol drinkers. And since they, in turn, can't handle complicated wines, they are softed.

2. Thesis. The insecurity of people associated with the worsening economic and social crisis awakens the longing for an "ideal world" and makes adults regress to being children again when it comes to eating and drinking. Didn't we already postulate in the 1960s that modern capitalism with its consumer terror was incapacitating people and that individuation was increasingly stuck in the oral phase?

3. Thesis. Manipulation through advertising. Due to the great differences in the eating habits of different cultures, it is postulated at management training courses of large US corporations in the fast-food sector that for the successful global marketing of food and beverages to adults, it is necessary to use targeted advertising to make the "children's taste", which is the same all over the world, popular in the adult world. By the way: American psychologists interpret the rounded "M" of the Mc Donalds logo as a stylised image of female breasts,

4. Thesis. All psycho-babble and old-68 conspiracy theories. People are animals, have always preferred sweet to bitter, and couldn't technically manage it with meatballs and wine in the past. Now it's finally possible. Cultivated yeasts, artificial enzymes... Or, for the advanced Frankensteins, a trip to the flavour merchant: What would you like? Maybe a little peach flavour? We recommend GAMMA-DECALACTONE NATURAL from H+R, organoleptical description: creamy-fruity, peach-like at concentrations below 5 ppm, 25 kg bag, thank you very much, anything else? Anyone who still drinks traditional Nebbilolos and mineral Rieslings these days is either stupid or a closet masochist

Röttgen is one of the top vineyards of the Heymann-Löwenstein estate on the Terassenmosel

Who, how, when and why ever... The sad fact is that more and more Coca-Cola winemakers are being crowned stars and Milupa wines are conquering the hit lists. And actually, it is about time that some "concerned scientist" discovers how "harmful to health" the old-fashioned wines are after all.
But the counter-movement is forming. Worldwide, there has never been so much discussion about wine, about quality, about technique, about terroir. How long will wine continue to be a natural product? What does good wine taste like? It's funny: the avant-garde of the wine scene today are the conservatives, the traditionalists. Out of reverence for nature and love for authenticity comes the conscious renunciation of the technically feasible, resulting in a turn to the terroir.

A concerted effort by all cheese lovers has succeeded in preventing the ban on genuine and oh-so "toxic" raw milk cheeses sought by the global gauda multinationals in the EU. The "locos del vino" are also forming, worldwide. And a network of traditional winemakers, traders, restaurateurs and wine enthusiasts guarantees that we will continue to find our way to real wines and that we will be able to indulge in real Barolos, traditional Bordeaux, complex Burgundies and authentic Rieslings with great pleasure.

Heymann-Löwenstein Winery in the Wein-Plus Wine Guide

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