What wine regions should wine collectors and enthusiasts invest in now, and 10 years down the line? Over the years, the answer to this perennial question has changed a few times – and it appears to be changing again.
What collectors, sommeliers and gatekeepers deemed to be classic benchmark wine regions changed following radical revolutions in winemaking in Tuscany and Rioja in the 1960s and '70s. Following the Judgment of Paris in 1976, Napa joined the holy trinity of Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne, and all have been propped up as exemplars of excellence ever since, against which every other region is compared or assessed.
Other regions have emerged, with slightly less pomp and circumstance, and were crowned, often justly, as a next great region to watch: i.e. the Willamette Valley, Marlborough, Mendoza. The good times, for wine, it seemed, would just keep getting better.
We know what happened next: the great times got less good, and now, amid tariffs and inflation, there are reasons to think the so-so era we're currently in may actually get worse, at least for a time.
Plus, there's a grim backbeat the industry can't ignore: a shift in consumption patterns, a reluctance among younger people to embrace high-end wine collection on a broad scale and continual climate change "challenges" that threaten the future of the regions in which grapes are believed to reach their apotheosis.
But while the rapid socio-economic shifts and environmental catastrophes that globalization and industrialization have precipitated do in fact threaten many aspects of wine culture, there have also been benefits. Technological advancements have ensured that wine can be made and consumed across the world, and awareness of and appreciation of fine wine has never been more widespread.
Amid these broad intellectual and economic changes, many in the industry are quietly rethinking and expanding the idea of what a benchmark even means.
"There seems to me a fallacy that people will always follow those who precede them," says Rob McMillan, executive vice president and founder of Silicon Valley Bank's Wine Division in St. Helena. "That has driven the myth that all we have to do is wait for younger people to grow older. But while we do model after others, I don't know of a teenager that wants to drive their parents' car to school. Given enough money, they will pick something different."
The next big things
The question is … how different? There are several regions that have managed the incredible trick of emerging as both fogey collector candy and young gun elixir.
Sicily, for example, is starting to see outside investments, which if Tuscany, Napa and the Willamette Valley are any indication, is the prelude for a serious increase in bottle value.
"You’re seeing outside investments in Sicily, coming from northern Italy," says Rocco Lombardo, president of New York's Wilson Daniels, a fine wine marketing and sales company. "Thankfully, there are winegrowing families like the Gaja family who have identified the potential in Sicily and made the investment. The marriage of the Graci and the Gaja families with their IDDA project lends legitimacy to the wines of Sicily."
Warmer temperatures in otherwise auspicious terroirs are also helping add weight and nuance to wines emerging from Mount Etna, Lombardo says.
"The wines of Mount Etna today have more flesh to them," Lombardo says. "There's real expression and purity due to the altitude and the volcanic soils. I'm also very bullish on the potential of the inland where Feudo Montoni is located, and how insulated it is."
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