Uploaded to Flickr by Lucia Whittaker.

In a recent installment of Drinking Out Loud, Matt Kramer put forward five questions that “divide” the wine world.

These questions strike at the heart of the most conflict-ridden issues among oenophiles. Last week, I tackled Kramer’s first question: “Power or Finesse?” The week, I’m looking at his second: “Old School or New Wave?”

There are those who believe the wine world will always exist as a dichotomy, even if the borders may at times be blurred. The thinking typically follows this structure: “There will always be the ‘New World Fruit and Alcohol’ paradigm and the ‘Old World Earth and Acid’ one. There will never be a broad acceptance and merging of the two styles into one all-encompassing, ideologically perfect drink that everyone consumes with joy and reverie. That’s whimsical.”

To a certain degree, that thinking isn’t too far off keel. I doubt anyone would embrace the uniformity such a creation would entail.

But consider current trends. As Kramer indicates, many producers have made concessions to modern day consumers: earlier accessibility, label transparency and disclosure, and more ambitious “green” initiatives – like organic farming or lighter bottles — in both wineries and vineyards.

The motivations are understandable. There’s simply more accountability in our era, a demanding consumer conscience that wants a wine without, say, the artifice of 1970s pest management philosophy: “Slay it all with Pesticides!” Consumers also don’t want to wait decades for a wine to be drinkable, especially if there’s no guarantee it won’t be tainted. But in certain market segments, these changes have also brought about an unintended uniformity, exactly the end-state some may have considered “whimsical.”

It’s no longer enough for producers to profess a return to certain Old School methods and ideologies while simultaneously crafting a wine that tastes like every other one on the shelf. Consumers also demand variety. A large percentage of consumers may like the bold fruit and smooth texture of New Wave wines, but I suspect they also wouldn’t mind something unique and provocative, two terms more often associated with Old World wines.

Let me offer an overly simple scenario: Put 10 self-professed wine fanatics in a room, blind-fold them, pour one giant Napa Cab and one classified Bordeaux, and tally the votes for “Most Preferred Wine.” You’ll probably find an even split — if California doesn’t win. In the flavor department, humans typically don’t embrace subtlety or restraint, mistaking such things for blandness or staleness. We like our Cokes and our Starbucks. But what would prove most interesting in this scenario is the Why behind those who preferred the Bordeaux. How would they describe their reasons for such a preference? Was there a point in time when they would have loved the Big Cab? When and why did their tastes change?

Uploaded to Flickr by Damian Liszatynski.

In my eyes, there isn’t so much a line in the sand dividing the two camps, New Wave and Old World, “Fruit and Alcohol vs. Terroir,” organic or conventional. Rather, there’s a line between two points, a continuum between when and where our affair with wine begins and the point in time when we look back at a lifetime of drinking and start to formulate our deepest notions.

Like Kramer asks, were “orange wines” unique and noteworthy, or just flat-out gimmicky? What about vinification in amphora, or perhaps the insistence on ambient yeast fermentations, or permitting wines with stuck fermentations to remain as they are, as if somehow predestined by nature?

Will we even be asking questions like these in a decade’s time?

Where we stand on these issues is a personal journey, defined in many ways by our own set of rules, preferences and ideologies, and open to change and debate at a moment’s notice. The more we educate ourselves, the more we understand and the sooner we begin to embrace discovery and adventure. With an open mind and a respect for mystery, we find that depth and complexity can be found in something as simple as water, and soon these thoughts of division and debate fade idly away.