It was one of those “have you noticed the police are getting younger?” moments. A sudden realisation of time’s passing akin to my my teenage kids looking back at Blur and Oasis through the same grainy, sepia-coloured lens, and from the same distance in time, as I looked back at the Beatles and Rolling Stones when I was their age. On this occasion, the trigger was a pair of news stories from the business pages about how two of the world’s biggest drinks companies, Pernod Ricard and Treasury Wine Estates, had decided to sell their most famous commercial wine brands.
The sale of, among others, Jacob’s Creek, Brancott Estate, Campo Viejo, Lindeman’s, Wolf Blass and the, for me, somewhat less affectionately regarded Blossom Hill sent an uncomfortable message to wine drinkers over the age of 40. Familiar names that provided us with our first wine-drinking experiences in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s were about as relevant today as Blue Nun, Black Tower and Lutomer Laski Rizling were when the great New World-led boom was in full swing.
