Want to Understand Wine? Use Maps

There’s a lot of talk of ‘simplifying’ or ‘demystifying’ wine. But that takes away from a beautiful drink that mother nature forges one time a year…and one that challenges us to understand. Would you say we need to simplify Anton Chekhov’s plays? No.

But what we do have at our disposal is something better than words or videos to further define this sacred beverage for us: Maps. The new wine celebrity isn’t Meghan Markle or Carmelo Anthony, it’s your local cartographer. For Italy, it’s Alessandro Massnaghetti (pictured below on the left). His maps are strewn across the walls of Italian wineries and stowed in carry-ons to showcase at wine tastings around the world. Why? It helps people connect lots of information in a short amount of time.

For Argentina, the celeb mapmaker is Guillermo Corona (below on the right), a former geophysicist in the gas industry that has single-handedly improved the understanding of Argentinian soil profiles through his mapping work.

From Alessandro’s 3D map versions that show every hillside to Guillermo’s underground analysis and vineyard pointers from 38,000 feet, both have become crucial educators that are giving people a deeper understanding of how terrain and slope affects quality.

For retailers and restaurants especially, these maps are tools that will improve a list in a tremendous way by not only leading diners to the best choice, but also educating them for the future. For producers, mapping your property would help market your wines to trade and media who already have a basis of knowledge to work off of, but also help your team convey the wine through and through. And for us wine drinkers, maps are just easy to get and when we see them in the context of vineyards, regions, and countries, it puts it all into perspective.

Some people don’t even know where Peru is. Assume we all don’t.