This article is taken from the May 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
All regular attendees of wine tastings will have their own shorthand, even if it’s just a system of ticks or stars. I have various abbreviations that come in useful, such as NW (natural wine), TP (touch pooey — very useful for assessing natural wines), and GWR (good with rillettes).
One I use frequently is MOD, short for modern. The difficulty is that the word means exactly the opposite of what it meant 25 years ago.
When I got into wine in the late 1990s, “modern” meant the sort of opulent wines coming out of St Emilion, Pomerol and Napa. They were built for the American market and the palate of Robert Parker Jr., the world’s most influential critic. Like Benny Hill in The Italian Job, he likes ’em big.
To make wine in such a style, you pick the grapes ultra-ripe, sometimes almost to the point of raisining, add acidity to make up for a lack in the grapes and age it in expensive new French oak barrels to make the wine taste of vanilla and toasted bread.
The style reached its apotheosis with the Château Pavie 2003, a very hot vintage in Bordeaux, which Parker loved but Jancis Robinson described as a “ridiculous wine more reminiscent of a late-harvest Zinfandel”.
Modern-style wines travelled around the world thanks to consultants such as Michel Rolland. They were made in California, Australia, Chile and particularly Argentina. Traditional regions began aping them, sometimes going as far as planting French grapes in Chianti, losing what made them distinctive. Then the fightback began. This was most noticeable in the “natural wine” movement that took off in 2009. It spurned oak, ultra-ripeness and additions in favour of letting the grapes speak for themselves, at least in theory. Many taste TP.
In California, the “In Pursuit of Balance” group was started in 2011 by winemakers and sommeliers appalled by how their state’s wines had become caricatures. The great freshening had begun. By 2014, my MOD abbreviation meant made in the new fresh style.
Globally, winemakers began cutting back on oak, picking grapes earlier and using cooler vineyards such as those at altitude. Other techniques include using whole bunches, stalks and all, which lower alcohol levels and provide a herbal, floral note to wines.
New classic regions were discovered, like the Sierra Gredos near Madrid, home to some of the world’s best Garnacha (Grenache). Chianti went back to using local grapes and ageing in bigger barrels but made with a ripeness that wasn’t there in the pre-Parker era.
The new modern style has been most noticeable in Rioja. Those big, jammy wines made during the Parker era have not aged well. Nowadays, producers are cutting back on French oak and Tempranillo, which were used to try to make a sort of Rioja-Pomerol hybrid.
Some, like Ramon Bilbao, are making perfumed Garnacha wines aged entirely in concrete. You might also have noticed that the supermarket staples, Argentine Malbec and Australian Chardonnay, tend to be less oaky these days.
As you can probably tell, I am a fan of the great freshening. But like Château Pavie 2003, has it all gone too far? Last year I tasted an anaemic 11 per cent South African Grenache — a variety that can comfortably reach 16 per cent alcohol — which actually made me a bit angry. Why not just let the grapes ripen?
The Australian wine industry seems to have gone all out on freshness. The country’s calling card used to be ripe Barossa Shiraz aged in American oak that tasted like “a concoction of wild fruits and sundry berries with crushed ants predominating”.
That was how one of the Penfolds board in the 1950s described the first vintage of Grange Hermitage, which would become an Australian legend. Thankfully, Grange is still made in this style — as is what I think is Australia’s greatest Shiraz, Rockford Basket Press. Much Shiraz, however, is a pale shadow of its sturdy forebears.
Wine merchant and writer Jeremy Oliver thinks abandoning classic styles shows a lack of confidence. He wrote: “It’s a massive trend in Australia today to harvest fruit before it’s reached flavour ripeness, which instantly removes the resulting wine’s chance of ever expressing site terroir or even regionality. That’s why so many Australian Chardonnays, Shirazes, Grenaches, and Pinot Noirs taste the same.” I’ve noticed this at wine tastings. Old modern wines all tasted of vanilla and damson jam, whilst new ones have the aroma of orange peel and a grassy herbal note.
I’m afraid to say that your wines are only going to get skinnier thanks to the recent changes to duty regulations in Britain, which penalise high-alcohol wines.
At the lower end of the market, producers are lowering the alcohol levels in wines such as Australian Shiraz, Argentine Malbec and Chilean Merlot so that their wines can be sold cheaper. Believe me, you do not want to drink an 11.5 per cent Australian Shiraz.
The truth is that some wine styles suit high alcohol, ripeness and noticeable use of oak. Whilst I am pleased that wines are, on the whole, more drinkable and fresher than they were 25 years ago, I don’t want to lose my burly Barossa Shiraz, manly California Zinfandels or buttery old-fashioned Chardonnay. Maybe we can coax Robert Parker out of retirement.
