When you pour a glass of wine, what makes it “good”? Is it clarity and balance? A sense of tradition? Or simply whether it moves you? These questions matter—not just to drinkers, but to the very future of wine itself.
Wine Education: Shaping Taste — and Limiting It
The Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET, established 1969, London) and the Court of Master Sommeliers (CMS, established 1977) have given the wine world a shared language and framework—tasting systems, service protocols, blind tastings, and here in Australia we owe much of our collective wine knowledge and the way we understand wine to frameworks such as these.
But they also teach a specific definition of quality: clean, precise, textbook-balanced wines. Styles like nutty Jura whites, oxidative Madeira, cloudy Loire naturals, Georgian qvevri wines and the orange wines of the Mediterranean—each rich with history—are diminished as flawed curiosities rather than recognised as legitimate expressions of place and history. This isn’t an objective truth about wine; it’s the imposition of a framework developed in London, exported around the world, and internalised as law.
A Dangerous Repetition of Vineyard Erasures
That imposition matters. It is a form of cultural gatekeeping. By controlling the language of wine, these programs reinforce a hierarchy where only certain styles, traditions, and regions are deemed valid, and it is no accident that these dominant definitions of wine quality promote regions, styles, and producers that sit closest to the centres of power (i.e. Western Europe).
This narrowing isn’t new. In the 1980s and 90s, many European vineyards uprooted indigenous grape varieties—like in Italy, Spain and Greece—in favour of globally recognised “international” grapes such as Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot. As wine writer Oz Clarke put it: Chardonnay became “the ruthless coloniser and destroyer of the world’s vineyards and the world’s palates.”
By the 2000s, many regions began fighting back and the wine world today is better for it. In Greece, the Assyrtiko variety was revived from near extinction in Santorini, with pioneering wineries like Gaia (established 1994) leading the charge. In Piedmont, the nearly lost Timorasso was rescued, chiefly through Walter Massa’s efforts in the 1990s. This revival underscored how erasing indigenous grapes is cultural loss—and how recovering them restores identity.
Australia has lived this tension directly. For decades, its wine industry chased clean, fruit-driven styles designed to meet external benchmarks.
Then, in the early 2010s, the Natural Selection Theory collective and events like Rootstock Sydney exploded onto the scene, bringing amphorae, wild ferments, and theatrical irreverence to tastings. For a time, Australia was seen around the world as a bold, wildly creative frontier.
That spark, however, has muted. Today, while solid farming practices remain, stylistic adventurousness has faded—giving way to a safer polish designed to reassure markets . The very art of expressive, locally rooted winemaking now risks memory’s fade, just as indigenous varieties once nearly did.
This pursuit of polish was canonised by critics, competitions, and even leading wine writers. James Halliday’s scoring system entrenched a preference for technical precision, while voices like Max Allen contextualised natural wine as a colourful fringe rather than a central thread. This has shaped the horizon of what Australian wine was allowed to be.
Wine culture rooted in these Anglo-European standards reinforces a colonial mindset that values and normalises sameness and poor cultural diversity. When you centre clarity, uniformity, and technical polish, you exclude marginalised traditions and voices—often those that do not conform to privilege.
At Aristotelis Ke Anthoula, our wines are a practice of cultural preservation. Our story stems from Greek village heritage—wines woven for meals, family, and community. They carry texture, savour, and cultural depth, refracted through Mediterranean tradition.
Just as the indigenous grape varieties around Europe were once rescued from erasure, we call for protecting expressive, heritage-rooted winemaking. Because once cultural wine traditions are lost—like those grape varieties—they are not easily reclaimed.