Jancis Robinson is widely regarded as one of the most respected wine authorities and writers in the world. She publishes her work on her own website (https://www.jancisrobinson.com) and we also see her wine-related essays in the Financial Times from time to time.

One of her recent FT pieces opened with an anecdote from a meeting in Turkey. As someone who was in the room that day, I remember the scene very clearly. What I continue to find hard to accept is that we have long understood that our biggest obstacle is our inability to work collectively, and yet we still fail to make any real progress. Below is an extended summary of the section from Jancis Robinson’s article.

A Glimpse From Istanbul

“A few years ago, I was invited to Istanbul to give a talk on export strategies to a large group of Turkish wine producers. I told them that if they wanted to be effective, they needed to act together rather than individually. The entire room burst into laughter. Apparently, in Turkey—and at least within its wine circles—the concept of cooperation was not very well-known.

After my talk, a producer from Greece, a country with plenty of rivalry of its own, came up to me and said, ‘If we Greeks can manage to export wine together, surely the Turks can too.’ Yet what was happening on Santorini was a sobering reminder of what the absence of cooperation can destroy: under the pressures of tourism, growers on the island were struggling to protect land, labor, and even water resources.” Robinson then contrasts this with Napa Valley.

Napa Valley: A Young Region With an Extraordinary Spirit

Compare this situation to Napa Valley. Although the region’s winemaking history is very new compared to the thousands of years of history in Greece and Turkey, the youth of modern Napa winemaking created an impressive sense of solidarity among producers. In the 1970s, wine producers in Napa were paving an entirely new path: turning cattle ranches into vineyards, planting vines instead of walnut trees, and joining forces to challenge France’s wine authority. The pioneer of this collective effort was Robert Mondavi, who founded the first new winery opened in the region after 33 years; his generosity and desire to work together guided the entire area.

Dennis and Judy Groth, who came to Napa from the video game industry in the 1980s and began making wine, came from a world where trade secrets were everything. When their neighbor Robert Mondavi offered them knowledge and a potential client list, they were suspicious; they even thought he was spying. Yet Mondavi’s intention was simply to elevate the region’s reputation and ensure newcomers progressed correctly.

Scott Becker, the director of Realm Cellars in Napa, shared his story during a visit to London: Napa’s esteemed producer Jack Cakebread had supported him by providing an internship and long-term free accommodation, helping him enter the industry. When Becker later tried to pay rent to show his gratitude, Cakebread firmly refused and told him his own memory: He once had tried to pay his debt to Mondavi, but Mondavi was uncomfortable with it and said, “One day, you will help a young person the same way.”

The culture of collaboration in Napa wasn’t limited to Mondavi. When Bart and Daphne Araujo, who bought the famous Eisele Vineyard in 1990, learned that the name rights to the vineyard belonged to Joseph Phelps, they were worried. However, Phelps hosted them in his home and transferred the naming rights to them free of charge; he even declined their fruit-purchase contract offers and told them they should devote the entire production to their own new wines. All he wanted was for the vineyard’s special character to be preserved.

Today, Napa Valley Vintners remains a strong organization focused on charitable work and kept alive by contributions from all producers in the region.

In Austria’s Wachau region, producers have been jointly maintaining their unique classification — Steinfeder, Federspiel, Smaragd — for many years.

A similar example of solidarity was seen in South Africa’s Swartland region. In the late 1990s, the new generation of producers in the area (Sadie, Mullineux, Louw, Badenhorst) realized that they needed to act together to introduce their powerful wines to the world. In 2010, they drew attention with a festival called “The Swartland Revolution,” and today they continue to move forward through joint tastings, information sharing, and collaborations. In Chile’s Maule region, south of Santiago, the area had long been seen as a source of cheap blending wines, but with collective groups like Vigno (Carignan) and Almaule (País), the region’s fate changed; local producers gained respect both in the country and around the world.

In Germany’s Baden region, producers established the Badischer Landwein category to work with grapes that did not meet the definition of quality wine but had potential. This independent group organizes its own market every year, creating a gentle environment of competition with larger producers.

Almanya’nın Baden bölgesinde üreticiler, kalite şarap tanımına uymayan ama potansiyeli olan üzümlerle çalışmak için Badischer Landwein kategorisini kurdu. Bu bağımsız grup her yıl kendi pazarını düzenleyerek büyük üreticilerle tatlı bir rekabet ortamı yaratıyor.

Italy’s Barolo, Barbaresco, and Bolgheri regions, as well as the Finger Lakes and Oregon’s Willamette Valley in the United States, are also places where producers work so closely that they even analyze each other’s wines.

There were once those in Burgundy who claimed they didn’t even know their neighboring producer’s address. Today, however, producers are mostly cooperative people. When the Dönnhoff family’s vineyards were damaged by frost in 2024, Bürklin-Wolf from Pfalz and Wittmann from Rheinhessen provided them with grape support.

In 2012, when Raimond de Villeneuve’s vineyard in Provence was completely destroyed due to hail, 36 producers in the area sent him fruit. And because accepting Austrian producer Fred Loimer’s Grüner Veltliner offer would create legal issues, Villeneuve paid each of them only one euro symbolically.

Of course, the wine world contains many organizations dedicated to specific purposes. But as seen here, in some regions collaboration has become an almost universal habit — except for a few grumpy exceptions.