Will you still be around in 50 years? We sincerely hope so, because the wine world will be turned topsy-turvy by then. This is not a prediction of doom. It is a nice future for wine drinkers, a very nice future.

To begin with, your favorite wine may come from China, the same nation that is producing almost everything we buy.

Don't laugh. China has an abundance of inexpensive land and every possible growing condition, as well as a huge, affordable labor force. Right now grapes for wine are grown in northeastern China. The government is sponsoring research into what grapes will grow where to make the best wine.

If China follows the course set by Japan after World War II, leaders will seek anything that appeals to Western culture. Wine is an obvious choice.

An important fact to keep in mind is that there are 1.3 billion people as possible consumers in China, not to mention the export possibilities.

Continuing to stare into our crystal ball, we come up with Australia. We have already informed our readers about the drought in that country. Due to this lack of water and higher temperatures, Australia will have to cut back on grape and wine production. With fewer grapes and much lower production, the Australian vintner will concentrate on the better wine area.

In 50 years, the Australian wines will be more expensive but offer more quality. Many Australian vintners will look for land in cooler climates like Tasmania and New Zealand. The more adventurous of them will probably look in China.

We blink and another picture emerges: the containers. The cardboard container will be in, the bottle and cork out. Why? Why not? Most wines no longer need bottle aging due to new production methods. The cork can spoil and ruin the wine, and the bottle can break. Cardboard saves money by being printed on directly, thus removing the need for a label, and the wine will last longer in an opened container because the wine is in a bag that eliminates trapped air that can ruin a wine. The cardboard container can also be dropped without breaking and cooled more quickly because the walls of the container are thin and not an insulator.

So if cardboard containers are so great, why are we not seeing more of them? Simple: Consumers are not ready to accept wine in anything but a bottle. Look how long it took for the screw top to even be partially accepted. In 50 years, wine drinkers will have experienced so much change that this minor readjustment should come easily.

Barring any catastrophic event, the future looks quite nice for the wine drinker. If we are right, there will be plenty of affordable Chinese wines in paper cartons for all of us.

As for us, we plan to stick around as long as we can to see if our predictions prove right. Check back with us in 50 years or so and we will discuss it over a box of pinyin, which is the Chinese word for grape wine.