There's been a lot written recently of the greying of the Canadian population. You know, people aged 60 and older make up a greater proportion of the population than ever before and the trend will continue.
Are there implications for wine? Apparently.
A few months ago, I had an e-mail from a reader concerning alcohol levels in wine. He wrote: "I began tasting wine semi-seriously back in the early 1970s. Red Bordeaux wines averaged around 12 per cent alcohol. My appreciation of wine has continued but ... somewhere along the way, I must have fallen into a black hole (or something) because the alcohol content is now around 13.5 to 14 per cent.
"Personally, while I like the taste of some shiraz and cabernets with 13.5 to 14 per cent alcohol, I would prefer less rather than more. Is this unreasonable? Where's the product line for the growing 55-plus demographic?" Alcohol levels in wine have risen, largely because wines from warm climates have begun to dominate the market. Australia, California, Chile and South Africa have their cool regions, for sure, but overall they are warmer than European wine regions.
Warm climates produce grapes with higher sugar content and the grapes, in turn, produce wine with higher alcohol (as fermentation converts sugar to alcohol).
Some producers deliberately reduce natural alcohol levels, but most don't, and it's not uncommon to see 14 per cent and more in wines in the LCBO. A couple of years ago I brought back from California a beautiful Zinfandel with an alcohol level of 16.9 per cent.
Now, I'm not sure how many people are concerned about high alcohol levels. From a sensory point of view, alcohol level shouldn't be an issue as long as the wine is balanced, and the alcohol doesn't produce a burning sensation or add undue sweetness to the flavour (both can happen).
But you do have to be careful if you're monitoring alcohol intake for health or other reasons, like driving. Drinking two glasses of 14.5-per-cent Zinfandel has a different effect than two glasses of 10-per-cent Riesling.
So if you're concerned about alcohol, check the level when you're buying wine. (I give alcohol levels of wines reviewed in this column). Of course, the alcohol content is often printed on the label in very small print, and sometimes runs vertically, so if your aging process includes failing eyesight, good luck.
Then there's a matter of failing taste.
Women start losing taste buds in their 40s and 50s, while men start losing them in their 50s and 60s. The buds that are left gradually lose mass. The result: older people just don't taste things as effectively as they used to. So an aging population of wine drinkers could shift to more intensely flavoured wines -- paradoxically, more likely to be New World wines and, therefore, higher in alcohol! A final issue that aging raises is manual dexterity. I've been told several times that screw caps are a real boon to older people who find it difficult to manipulate a corkscrew.
Thank God we don't need 20/20 vision or good hearing to enjoy wine! l How's this for four wines for the greying set? Not one over 12.5 per cent, three are sealed under screwcap and two are pinot grigio, or "grey pinot." But younger people can enjoy them, too.