Professor Rod Phillips was interviewed by Magazine F (reading-f.com/), a Korean magazine that takes an in-depth look at common foods and drinks. Each issue focuses on one commodity, and earlier issues have included tea, bread, honey, and yoghurt. The January 2024 issue focuses on wine, and Rod talked about various aspects of wine, including the importance of wine professionals’ understanding its history.
“Knowing the history of wine is very important because wine professionals often refer implicitly to history and get it wrong. For example, they often talk about ‘tradition’, as in ‘traditional winemaking’, as if there was one way of making wine before modern methods. Natural wine is often said to be made in the ‘traditional’ way. But if we look at history, wine has been made in many ways. In the Ancient world, many things were added to wine: tree resin, salt water, herbs, spices, honey, lead…. Is this ‘traditional’? In early modern Europe, wine was left to age in dirty open vats and it must have been oxidized and infected with various yeasts, such as Brettanomyces. Is this traditional?”
This issue of Magazine F is currently published in Korean, and the English edition will appear in February.