The anti-wine forces are massing and strengthening in a way I haven’t experienced in my lifetime. Until very recently, seeing a seminar advertised on “The Future of Wine” I would have assumed the major threat was climate change. But now societal influences are joining planetary ones (themselves not without societal influence). There is also a paradox here, because the existential threats to wine are gathering as wine celebrates a golden age of sophistication and beauty.
Medical squadrons are in the vanguard of the attack. The Chief Medical Officers of the UK now advise that men as well as women should not exceed 14 units of alcohol per week. Don’t be surprised if the recommended level drops further. Much more ominously the WHO warns that “no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.” Proponents of the French paradox – the theory that relatively low levels of heart disease in France might be explained by relatively high intake of red wine – have gone rather quiet.
Many of the big guns of religion have long had their sights set on wine. The Islamic prohibition on alcohol does not look likely to be overturned soon. Evangelical Christians are split on the matter. The fact that Donald Trump is a teetotaller is…well, shall we just say bizarre?
Equally as worrying for wine producers, I would guess, as these outright attacks is the sense that for a significant proportion of people – perhaps especially young people – wine may no longer be “cool” or interesting. That is obviously a very partial observation, and I know also that the wine world is fuller than it has ever been of young people of exceptional talent and passion. Maybe I am too influenced by the fact that at the launch of my latest poetry collection more than half the wine remained undrunk. That certainly didn’t happen at the launch of my first poetry collection nearly a quarter of a century ago.
My intention is not to take up arms against the health squadrons or the religious battalions. The challenge I want to set myself here is more modest: how to convince a wine sceptic, especially a young person who just doesn’t “get” wine. What’s the justification for wine?
There seems to me a choice here of aiming quite low or quite high. The temptation is to aim low, by pointing out the agreeableness of wine – especially “fruit-forward” wine – as a beverage, its role as a social lubricant and general bringer of good cheer. But this would be rather like arguing the case for classical music based on the blandest offerings of Classic FM. They are perfectly fine but they don’t get to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter consists of works like the two performed recently at the BBC Proms, in a memorable concert, by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under their now frail but still indomitable founder-conductor Daniel Barenboim and the great German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter – Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Schubert’s Great C Major symphony. One is the epic journey of a soul through passion, anger, loss, defiance and regret to ultimate celebration, the other more inscrutable, the expression of what Wordsworth called “something far more deeply interfused/ Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,/ And the round ocean, and the living air,/ And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.”
That may sound altogether too high-flown, but wine, like other artforms, has purely sensuous, emotional, intellectual elements, and can be appreciated at all those levels. Above all, it is, or can be, part of culture, not merely a gluggable route to anaesthesia or oblivion. That was a lesson I imbibed at an early age from my wine-, music- and art-loving father, a deeply cultured auto-didact who saw all those cultural phenomena as being part of the same spectrum.
Why not start as I did in the valleys of the Mosel, Saar and Ruwer near the ancient Roman city of Trier with its 2,000-year-old “black gate”, the Porta Nigra? A Kabinett from Haart, Schaefer, Zilliken, JJ Prüm or Von Schubert will entrance and captivate a novice palate with its delightful green apple or white peach freshness but also afford glimpses of a more abstract beauty, a Mozartian grace and energy.
The satisfying beauty of wine can help bring order to a disordered mind or soul. I think back to a moment 30 years ago, when I was setting off for Spain on a three months’ long adventure in a big old Vauxhall estate car. Having driven from London to Plymouth I boarded the ferry to Santander. Feeling a bit disoriented (why was I even doing this? What was I running away from?) by early evening, I went to the cafeteria in the bowels of the big Brittany Ferries ship and ordered a steak and chips and a half-bottle of the St Estèphe cru bourgeois Château Meyney 1988 (the best wine they had, and a château many experts now think deserving of cru classé status).
I don’t remember anything about the steak frites but the Meyney magically calmed my mood, attuned my senses, reconnected me to myself and thus to others and the world around me. This wine, with its tannic structure and a certain seriousness and depth, demanded attention. It asked questions, and it brought rewards. I walked out onto the deck, on that calm June evening, restored to my senses and myself.
Was it bad for my health? I would say (no doubt some of the medical experts would disagree) that the mental health benefits greatly outweighed any physical ill-effects. Was it an inducement to louche or violent conduct, as the religious puritans have warned since time immemorial? Absolutely not. I felt more warmly and generously attuned to my fellow-humans after savouring that half of Meyney than I had before. Ideally, of course, it would have been a bigger bottle (a magnum, say) and shared among friends, with lively conversation rather than just internal musings. But one step at a time…
Photo by Davidson Lunca on Unsplash