I would say 2/3 are for mass consumption
One thing i know for sure.
Coffee is spectacular almost everwhere in Italy/Rome , and SHOCKING in Scotland and pretty bad in England… a good coffee is as rare as hens teeth in those places 
So it all depends really doesnt it 
Good job, I think the reflexions and refractions are too strong probably due to the Hdr.
Hate to break it to ya, but france is not the ‘only’ premier wine creating country of the world. Ill have to try and find the news link, but I was listening to NPR the other day and they told of a story about how quite awhile ago, californian wines beat french wines in a taste competition, that took place in various locations around the world. Afterwards, the french complained that those same wines would taste like junk several years later, because french wines age better. So many years later, they did a repeat of the competition and the same american wines beat the french wines again.
Ill start looking for the link.
EDIT: Heres a link to the story from NPR. Not sure where the article is that NPR reported from…
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5429748
EDIT2: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/25/WINE.TMP
Just to state, Im not trying to stir things up or hijack a thread regardless of how it seems in my post hehe :lol:
I say, come and try for yourself.
We are talking quality AND quantity.
I hate to break it to you, broh, but try and taste a 2 dollars bottle of unbranded wine in Tuscany, then come back and let’s talk again.
You are telling me a BRITISH and an AMERICAN BUSINESSES voted over french wines?
Like either of the two know jack about them.
Besides: they did ONLY organolectic tasting (hence subjective to a high degree), and no chemical analisys whatsoever.
Stuff we in Italy do at chemistry school when aged 16 for wines, extra virgin olive oils, waters.
Not to mention the VERY racist comment on “French Fries” in the first post, which indeed SETS the tone of the whole competition.
Broh, you’re roughly 2500 years behind in winemaking. try and find for yourself a reason about it 
And no i ain’t being polemic either. i am stating facts
Lele
I guess you missed the french guy that voted for the american wine twice. but im done arguing. nobody is saying the french wine isn’t good, just that the american isn’t bad.
I didn’t miss the one “french fry” that voted.
ONE, sure.
When there is an organising panel with LOADS of money in their pockets.
Buying of judges DOES help, especially if economic interests big enough depend on the judge’s choice.
But nevermind that, it IS an hypotesis with no fundation on facts.
I do not doubt you DO produce good wines.
Australia, and New Zealand do too.
What is missing, however, is the multi-millenary tradition which places like France and Italy can boast.
It’s like trying to teach the beglian monks how to do beers.
You’ll surely be able to have a FEW good beers produced, but you will never be able to match the kind of cultural spread, and knowledge, that hudreds of years of social interaction built up.
On a side note: does it cost more a Liter of beer, or a liter of average red wine?
In italy, wine is by far the cheapest alchoolic drink.
And by cheapest i do not imply in any way, shape, or form “low quality”.
In tuscany, for instance, you walk in a supermarket and buy a bottle of wine with no D.O.C. on it (no controlled origin of the grapes and canteens, so it cannot be called “Chianti”, for instance) in the Chianti area (starting from just south of Florence), and you might pay it one and a half euros (less than 2 USDs).
That bottle is going to have been made in the same town where you’re buying it, and you might walk by the grapes without knowing it.
A pint of beer, in the same town, in a pub, doesn’t come any cheaper than 4 euros (6 USDS).
This is what i mean by Wine culture.
Lele
hey Maxer
that’s one powerful image :lol:
lele,
maybe you should really go and visit the new world to get over your prejudices a bit? open up your mind?
I have been living in both italy (florence) and australia and i have had bad and great wine and food in both countries.
You don’t seem to realize that most people in australia come from european countries and the mixing together of many cultures and their traditions results in an amazing varity of great wine and food.
…maybe I should add, that I am no Australian but German…
Great work maxer btw! Love your images.
Viele gruesse
Maybe i didn’t say it properly.
Anyone, given funds, time, some sunshine and some help, can create a good wine.
And hey, Italy DOES have shit food and shit wine, which generally goes to the unawares (i have to say, with some pleasure from the part of the givers, especially when serving the unwary).
Sorry to say, coming here and “living” here for a bit doesn’t quite cut it.
We’re no freshly built society, nor a business oriented one with many plugs for people to fit right in and produce.
Do you speak Italian? You were in Florence, did you pick up some accent as well?
They’re so jealous about language there…
And did you pick up an accent from Florence, or from Prato, or the Mugello area? Or maybe the Chianti?
Did you learn the colorful swearing that comes with the red wine?
Did you sit down playing cards on a bottle of red with the elderly?
Did you listen to their drunken stories?
Italy’s SO varied within itself that if Rivoli was to go to Florence and ask for a coffee in a bar, he’d be spotted as non Florentine. After all he IS from a hundred or so kms south.
Sistah, there’s a LOT more than coming here, spending money, and pretending to enjoy it.
As to what trips i have done, it is irrelevant to the point.
The shadow of the fast food culture is long enough, and i DID have my years of tasting it abroad, don’t you worry about it.
In fact, i came back to Italy PRECISELY for the food and culture, surely not for the economical situation or the lively work market.
Is it me and my twisted sense of the new world that says that both australians AND people from the US are a VERY small population on a VERY big landmass?
Or that they built, and developed over the years, primarily as a MASSIVE SCALE industry?
100 kms in australia might just be ONE vineyard, for what i know.
In italy and france, probably three entirely different cultures could be crossed over.
But sure, the new world CAN and indeed DOES produce some bottle of good wine.
Lele
Soooo Maxer about your image… Yep love it, very good.
Colin
ya its a great image maxer, keep it up!
Guess we will all think twice before putting a label on the next wine bottle rendering!! :lol:
Is it me and my twisted sense of the new world that says that both australians AND people from the US are a VERY small population on a VERY big landmass?
Or that they built, and developed over the years, primarily as a MASSIVE SCALE industry?
100 kms in australia might just be ONE vineyard, for what i know.
In italy and france, probably three entirely different cultures could be crossed over.
Heheh, Lele, the US and Australia aren’t just big corporate holdings, sure we have a few big ones. We have areas that are populated as diversely and densely as Italy.
Most of our good wines, both the Aussies’ and ours, come from small “Boutique” Wineries. Comprised of a few acres. Some even press the wines by foot.
humm, well, where to start… I know your wine, that’s ok, I like them, taht’s also ok.
I have visited the “new world” which I love, also well.
InFrance you have laws to plant vines, you must have some right to plant them, in général you win the right by your father or other familly, ok. This kind of law avoid mass production, well. Nobody could become a wine productor easier in france that’s very very hard, and it’s not a question of money, it’s a question of tradition. All of this permite to the other to live (here I speak about money) do you unsderstand?
That’s the difference between you and us IMHO
Like, 60 million italians on a territory the size of NZ, inhabited from a few thousand years before christ, grown along the greeks and the mediterranean countries, surrounded by diverse populations that kept mixing and stirring our genepoll across the ages, has just the same cultural depth, socio-geographical diversity, and historic heritage as a 250 years old colony?
It IS delusional
I speak for Italy, but the same goes for OLD europe, at large.
WE ARE the natives, you know, after all.
Your natives lived on the continent for tens of thousands of years, and have been all but wiped out in the space of a couple of hundred at most…
That was a comparable culture, but i gather it’s pretty much lost.
You have incredible benefits, though, out of being a “new country”: you’re a LOT speedier facing change and adapting than old europe is, for the good and for the bad.
Most of our good wines, both the Aussies’ and ours, come from small “Boutique” Wineries. Comprised of a few acres. Some even press the wines by foot.
Do they now?
Next time you’re around Italy, i’ll show you a few unpretending places, which press wine in the same way from over 500 years.
The buildings haven’t changed, the woodden mechanisms have undergone the due maintenance, but have parts that to the day they are probably a hundred years old.
And lo, they do NOT sell it.
They just drink it.
And not a few places.
Entire regions with millions of people living there, and passing on the tradition from father to son, something that has been done for dozens of generations.
They don’t need to build a canteen, they inherit it.
It comes at a steep price, of course, with “official” unemployement, low schooling (comparatively, mind you) and a certain resistance to innovation, in the most traditional areas.
So, all in all, i would not make the “we’re just AS in this or that” statement.
As in my eyes we are not.
It doesn’t mean there’s any “better”, despite my most obvious attachment to the old continent’s history and culture; it just means there are differences and points of contact across cultures, but each has their different long standing peculiarities and traditions, things at which they excel, and others at which they do less well, and ways of facing issues and change.
Therein lies the richness, once recognised…
Lele
Man Maxer, I’m sorry your impressive image sparked… this.
I’m an American, and there’re many things about my country that I don’t like -- the belief that everything that is best in the world can be found within our borders being among the most onerous. But the ONE thing that I attribute to this country having that few others do, in fact most Europeans fight tooth and nail against, is cultural diversity. Hell, I’m sure we have Italian immigrant vintners working with hispanic day laborers out in Cali! Maybe diversity wasn’t what you meant?
Bahh, I don’t know. This whole debate has gotten a bit nuts. A couple people state preferences for American or Austrialian wine and suddenly I’m seeing my culture as a whole being slandered as shallow? Well, I suppose if you equate our culture with our television programs…
That’s all I wanted to say. The fray may recommence. Good work in any case, Maxer.
Shaun
:: EDIT ::
Lele, I re-read your post and I get what you’re saying about regional diversity within one country. You’re right, we don’t have that. I was born and raised in New Hampshire, though I could pass myself off as a local San Franciscan without anyone being the wiser. But we have diversity in people. My boss is Austrian. Two of my coworkers next to me are Brazillian and British. That kind of diversity in the population allows for incredibly cross-pollination, and I love it.
I guess I have a hard time believing that a species as adaptable as the human race can be bred to make the best wine. But that’s another debate.
…thanks
man you french need to get over it. me thinks you doth protest too much…
Indeed.
Given another couple of thoushands years of that, you’ll end up as Europe, whereby the national labelling has no bearing, for some countries, with the genepools origins.
Italy for one, but most others too.
We have diversity in people as well, but so old rooted that parts of italy speak dialects (not accents, or slangs. Languages) which are a blend of spanish and morrocan, others something close to french, german and whatnot. Heritage of Thousands of years of mixing through war, osmosis and borders redesign.
I think the Romans were mixing with the Jews in palestine around year 0, or thereabout.
And with the germans, french, english, danish…
I was born in Milan by Italian parents (for what i can gather:lol:), and in London they’d alternatively take me for a Greek, a Turk, or a lighter Morrocan.
We all are this mixed up, really: the mediterranean sea is small indeed.
And this mixing has been going on for a fair while
London, Milan and Rome, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam to name a few, though, are JUST as you were describing the US.
Power nodes which attract people from all over the world and help more stirring to happen.
Where there’s honey, there’s bees and bears
But there we go, i’ll close it here.
I’ll try upping my post as i usually do, nice and helpful.
Nice Image, btw, but could you fill up the wine bottle a bit more?
I’d like to have both the decanter AND the bottle full up, so there’s more to drink
Lele