For many years there has been in wine production a tendency to choosing 'comfortable and safe' vine varieties at the expenses of the less known local ones, this causing, in some cases, the disappearance of some the latter. Winemakers shouldn't take all the blame as a big part of this trend is definitely connected to the evolution of wine distribution. It is renown that the biggest wine retailers are nowadays supermarkets and this is not only in UK. So if the wine buying experience is as impersonal as it is in a supermarket, what do you think the casual consumer will go for? Correct: he/she will go for the names they have heard, for something they know. He will go for Cabernet Sauvignon rather than Aglianico. She will go for Chardonnay rather than Albariño. So this partly then justifies producers trying to make wines that need to be sold!
More recently this is slightly changing. Countries like, for example, Portugal have made a point of sticking to their local varieties, facing the adverse comments of those buyers and sommeliers that were considering these wines too difficult to sell. And their stubbornness proved them right: now those wines are regarded as some of the most interesting in the industry in terms of good value for money and local expression.
I want to stress that, even to a (wine)hippie like me, globalization is not the Bogeyman and we should definitely make the most of it in terms of cultural free interchange but we also need to preserve the local cultures and traditions and in the specific case we should preserve the indigenous vine varieties. And this is up to the various wine professionals that have the power to educate consumers and direct them in their buys through supermarket wine selections, through articles and events especially considering that wine consumers are gaining more knowledge and consciousness every day and their curiosity is increasing.
Indigenous varieties are a great richness for a country's viticulture as they will distinguish it from the rest of the world so it is essential to preserve this diversity in order to maintain every wine countries' identity. And it is also a great opportunity.
