We Should Drink More Wine

Editor’s Note: This article discusses alcohol through the lens of culture, history and community. Cutting Takes does not encourage excessive or unsafe alcohol consumption. If you choose to drink, please do so responsibly, in accordance with UK law and current NHS guidance. Drinking alcohol is a personal choice, and there are many ways to celebrate and build community that do not involve alcohol. If you’re concerned about your own drinking or someone else’s, support is available from Drinkaware and Alcohol Change UK.

The study of wine has a pretentious name. Oenology. Not to be confused with Ornithology, the study of birds, a mistake which, once upon a time, I embarrassed myself making. More often than not, the assumption is that wine and wine tasting (‘dégustation’) are the apanage of a very limited circle of people. Only the highest echelons enjoy a 1990 Château Margaux with a nub of Pecorino cheese. One must be on one’s high horse to distinguish between a Chianti Classico and a Barolo. 

However, I would instead contend that the journey one has with wine is entirely personal, unique, an oft-traced trajectory from (my once preferred) Echo Falls to the lofty pepper notes of a Bordeaux. 

Wine’s reputation as snobbish and elitist is fair. But it is also a folly. A self-sabotage. Because to put something on an inaccessible pedestal is to rob oneself of a pleasure that should be universal. Good wine is not necessarily expensive wine. Good wine does not belong to the few, but to the many. 

When I first started drinking wine, it was a watery white with sugar and finely chopped strawberries mixed in, plied with an occasional splash of tequila, so that my dad could serve me something I liked in the summer. It attracted more wasps than it was worth, but it was wine (arguably punch) made with love. Having now been a tried and tested member of three different university wine-tasting societies––one in the UK, one in France and one in Austria––I have become convinced that what truly distinguishes a good wine from a bad wine is the hand that pours it, and the company you drink it with. Wine is meant for love, for laughter, for the spirit of generosity, for bringing people together. This is its traditional, enduring role. To elevate it to an unattainable pedigree is to lose the flavour of what it means to say cheers, prost, salut, à les tiens. 

It seems to me a tragedy that young people have abandoned wine. Cost, its elitist image, the inaccessibility, lack of exposure – each is a  discouraging impediment that makes drinking a pint far more appealing. It is high time that we young people had a stake in wine-drinking too. We should repossess it. Bibi, edi, vici. I wined, I dined, I conquered. 

In this vein, this article is by no means a lesson in how to distinguish between a Sauvignon Blanc from Sancerre or from Pouilly Fumé––only on a very good night could I tell you that––but will make three arguments in favour of the drinking of wine. In particular, it will make three arguments in favour of why young people should be drinking wine– and not just leaving it to the OAPs. They already have a triple lock pension – we should drink some good wine too. Interwoven with some histories, myths and legends about wine, I will put forward that wine is a sensual speciality, an art in its own right and, above all, a community sport. 

It is my hope that you, too, may be convinced to raise a glass with friends. 

Wine is a gateway to the senses 

Almost before we learn our ABCs we are taught our five senses. As time unwinds, these senses gradually imbibe an implicit hierarchy. Namely, certain senses are for the classroom. We are taught to think with our eyes and our ears. Listening to lectures; reading vast law manuals; pouring over copies of Jane Eyre. Touch has a special status as it relates to the motor skills, but taste, and certainly smell, become the luxury senses. We have no equivalent of blindness or deafness of the tongue or the nose built into our language, and yet, these senses are an intrinsic and essential part of the everyday. And they are learning tools. They are transportive portals and heady gateways to an entirely different part of the brain.

If unlocking the forgotten senses of smell and taste is the goal, then wine is the key. The smell of mossy forest floor; the tang of citrus, grapefruit, zesty lime; the lingering aftertaste of beeswax that clings to the tongue; the vanilla; tobacco; melon; apricot; treacle; pepperiness; et cetera et cetera. The list is endless, and entirely unique for each individual and each glass of wine. 

Unlocking smell-taste associations is a bizarrely satisfying pleasure. It provokes the same kind of sensation when you are desperately caught trying to remember a name or a word, it’s at the very tip of your tongue, and it suddenly dawns on you, in a splendid moment of luminous anagnorisis. And this time, it literally is at the very tip of your tongue. 

Taste, in its own right, is polysemic – it has two meanings. To taste––physically––and to have good taste, in terms of style, a certain je ne sais quoi. The boundary between physical taste and mental taste is very fine. At least, this is the argument of the philosopher David Hume in his 1760 essay Of the Standard of Taste. Hume claims that immediately after we consume a work of art, aesthetic object or literary piece, we can never properly appreciate it: it is always clouded by a ‘mist’. However, the critic’s role is to rarefy and refine, ‘dissolving’ the mist (which is both a bodily and atmospheric one) through a mental digestive process. Only then, can the true, personal response emerge. Taste is discovered. What is true at first glance, must be digested and ruminated for its verity to emerge. 

The same is true of wine. The first sip is never the same as the sixth. A Riesling smells like petrol but this petrol-like pungence soon fades into powerful sweetness. You must sit with it to understand it, to clear the mist. 

Hume even used the analogy of wine to illustrate his point in an amusing anecdote from Don Quixote:

It is with good reason, says Sancho…that I pretend to have a judgment in wine. Two of my kinsmen were once called to give their opinion of a hogshead, which was supposed to be excellent, being old and of a good vintage. One of them tastes it; considers it; and…pronounces the wine to be good, were it not for a small taste of leather. The other, gives also his verdict in favour of the wine; but with the reserve of a taste of iron, which he could easily distinguish. You cannot imagine how much they were both ridiculed for their judgment. But who laughed in the end? On emptying the hogshead, there was found at the bottom an old key with a leathern thong tied to it. 

Imagine, when tasting a glass of wine, that there is always some unidentified object at the bottom of it. This dispels the myth that there is a ‘right’ answer to what you can taste: it is not a tick-box exercise. 

To sample wine and to identify the ‘tasting’ notes within it is an intensely personal experience. Crucially, it is about both forms of taste. Preference and the tongue. A wine that tastes like bliss to me, might well taste like cat piss to you – the latter being a description that has been bandied around more than once on a slightly tipsy evening at my uni. Tasting wine also changes the purpose of drinking wine. Less to get drunk, more to allow people to slow down, deliberate, allow the brain, (for a fleeting moment) to tune out the sound and chaos of the outside, honing in on the simple delicacy of a taste. Cocktails and beers have their moment too––I am partial to both––but wine isn’t necessarily designed for a night out, rather a night in. 

Wine, too, is not stagnant. Over the course of time, wine tastes and preferences have completely flipped on their head. The champagne of the 1800s would be entirely undrinkable today – sickeningly sweet to mask the naturally fierce acidity of the French grapes of the era. Or, in the 1905 Baedeker’s Guide to Paris, the Parisian wine recommendations given for the city traveller are totally random. White Burgundy and Bordeaux wines would typically be mixed with water or mineral water. Champagne (especially Tisane) combined during mealtimes in a carafe frappée mixed with icy water for mealtimes. Tastes have evolved immensely – even if Saint-Émilion, Sauternes and Hermitage still remain fan favourites. 

In short, there is no right or wrong way to drink wine – it’s up to you!

Taste is personal, smell association is personal. My mother’s favourite wine is Egyptian ‘Nephertiti’ wine served in a thimble with a spoonful of sugar because she grew up drinking it as a child on New Year’s Eve in Cairo. My dad cannot stomach an Australian Chardonnay because the oakiness of it sends him careening back to a youthful evening that ended in a bathroom rather than bar. Wine lovers can tell you what they love, and also what they hate. Wine is experimental. Wine is about tasting and smelling and letting the brain, for once, think with the senses that it usually associates with luxury. In the spirit of decadence, sensual savouring is also a productive lesson – Oscar Wilde would agree. 

Wine is a way to let those oft-forgotten senses not tumble into obsolescence. 

Wine is a weird and wonderful art 

In 1596, Caravaggio painted his famous rendition of Bacchus brandishing the widest-brimmed wine glass I have ever seen, with an almost full decanter beckoning from the left corner. The God of wine, the incarnation of this sacred substance, lounges in a blissful, almost impassive, recline. His image, eternally captured by Caravaggio’s brush strokes, is a dark-tinted palette of hedonism and tannins. 

Wine is pictorially rendered as an aesthete’s pleasure. Art melds with taste. Bacchus is tasting the wine; we are tasting Caravaggio’s rendition. Taste, again, boasts its two meanings. It is a weird and wonderful and whacky moment of synaesthesia. 

There is art that features wine as its subject, but wine is an art in its own right. Each step of the process, its production, its packaging and its eventual curation in wine cellars, is a connoisseur’s delight, an aficionado’s envy and an amateur’s opportunity. 

Step 1: Production 

What goes into a bottle is only half the battle. The grapes, with their skins, or without – determine red versus white wine. Which grape, or grapes? Maybe a blend? Aged in oak or in a steel vat? How old is the barrel? How minerally is my soil? How much sugar to add? These are questions better left to the vintners, but they are questions whose answers constitute a uniquely fine art. It is a potion laboratory, a wizard’s concoction and it can produce sheer magic…or something very vinegary.  

The vineyards, the blends, the barrels, the ageing process – a mystery and a miracle in one. Production often remains a family secret, carefully guarded for generations. It is an art. That much is certain.

Step 2: Packaging 

This is by far my favourite part of the process, and an underrated step. Printing the pretty labels or ‘étiquettes’––and don’t underestimate a sexy wine label––they can be magnificent…and very collectable. They are a stamp of history; a mark of belonging and of tradition. They can be traced as far back as Ancient Egypt when the clay bottles, or amphorae, were stamped with the hieroglyph of the trader. They are living, evolving vignettes of oenological art. 

Nowadays, wine labels often depict the vineyard châteaux, an embroidered rose, or, as is the case of the up-and-coming English sparkling wine brand Gusbourne, based on the goose-inspired family crest in the local chapel. 

Wine labels are miniature artistic pocket squares, patchwork prints from all over the world. If people collect stamps – why don’t we collect wine labels too? 

And let us not forget, if you buy a bottle of wine, you essentially get your own little masterpiece for free. BOGOF.

Step 3: Curating a Collection 

Recently, I got a message from a friend. His new pride and joy was the wine rack he had just installed in the basement of his apartment building. He was thrilled. 

His collection may be nascent, but it is burgeoning. And the beauty of it is that he can curate and cultivate it exactly to his preferences. In the style of Voltaire’s Candide, ‘Il faut cultiver notre jardin’. Un jardin de vin. 

I was once told by the French wine expert Jérémie Huillet that his perfect trio of wines would be the following: a Brut Vintage Pol Roger Champagne, a Burgundy White, and a Bordeaux Red. A classic and classy range that holds something for everyone, and pairs beautifully with a meal. But curating a wine collection is a slow-burn art that must be mastered over time. It is only by trying, by sampling, by experimentation that you can work out what belongs in the wine rack in your cellar. 

King’s College, Cambridge is perhaps the most macro-scale experimentation project in wine cellar curation – it is also a legendary wine collection. Allegedly, the college’s cellar contains upwards of 50,000 bottles, and has existed since 1446. The college even has its own Wine Steward who safeguards, expands and curates the collection, ensuring that its quality and curiosity endures. Peter de Bolla currently occupies the role of Wine Steward and has been instrumental in the purchase of some tantalising new discoveries for the cellar including the Pinot Noirs of Vosne-Romanée Cros Parantoux. 

Each Pinot Noir, each Chardonnay, each Rioja has its own heritage, its own history, its own place on the rack. It also has its perfect moment to be uncorked, for a special occasion, a celebration, or a casual evening where wine is drunk simply to be enjoyed in good company. Oftentimes, these are the best bottles. Those with no occasion or expectation, no real purpose or plan. Simply the pursuit of pleasure. 

Drinking wine is a community sport 

Recently, my next door neighbour Nick passed away. In the twenty years I had been living in the quintessential little English village, he and his wife had witnessed my brother and me grow up, and they had become dear friends of my parents. Nick was quite the force of nature and had drunk more bottles of wine than anyone I have ever known. This might have something to do with the fact that he was once a Chairman of Vranken-Pommery UK, but mostly I believe, he just loved a good wine and sharing it with his friends and family. 

Now Nick had, over the years, curated an impeccable wine cellar. But what was most special about Nick’s approach to wine was his generosity without distinction. He was willing to share a bottle with anyone and everyone he cared about – he made sure the glass was never empty of both the 18-year-old daughter of his next-door neighbour, and a life-long friend he had known since his university days. Anyone can drink and appreciate wine. Everyone deserves a place at the table. This is what Nick taught me about oenology. And it is how he created an entire community around him. 

There is a passage in Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Flights which details the journey one has with knowledge throughout a lifetime:

Associations travelled down unusual routes, likenesses were found in the least expected versions … Well-trodden paths turned out to be worth nothing, while those thought untraversable proved convenient routes. Something that meant nothing for years suddenly…became the departure point for some great revelation, a real paradigm shift. 

In many ways, the same is true of my neighbour Nick and the world of wine which he knew and loved. ‘Associations travelled down unusual routes, likenesses were found in the least expected versions’. Nick used wine as a vehicle and a catalyst to bring the most unlikely pairings of people together. The priest from round the corner, the bird expert from the end of the lane, the crazy German (my father) from the house next door…the butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker. Wine made the untraversable routes convenient, made us take the road less travelled by rather than the well-trodden paths. 

Now when I go out to dinner with my family and we order a bottle of wine, my dad always gestures to me to try it when the waiter first pours. Without fail, the waiter is mightily confused at the turn of events, but in true Nick spirit, it is a ‘real paradigm shift.’ Wine can be universally appreciated and enjoyed. Wine doesn’t just belong to our parents’ generation – it seems to, because they are often more able to afford it than we are, but wine-drinking is not a solitary sport. It is a community-forming, neighbourhood-building, generosity-enabling moment of time shared, life enjoyed. When a bottle is shared, chosen together, poured for one another, discussed, mulled over, it stimulates the liveliest of conversations. It becomes more than just a bottle. It is a ritual. 

There is a slightly kitsch but touching line in the musical Les Misérables which reads ‘Let the wine of friendship never run dry’. In Nick’s memory, I hope that this is true for the little community that he left in his wake. 

An appeal to drink more wine 

In our current world which becomes more isolated and isolating by the day; in which our society is stretched further and further apart on the anatomising-table, loneliness is ever more prevalent. Community and neighbourhood are too often forgotten or laid aside in the humdrum mania of the everyday. 

And yet, amidst the chaos, wine remains a centrifugal force of unity that brings people together. It is cross-generational, it has no regard for gender, ethnicity or place of birth. Wine renders all equal. No nose is instinctively better than another. It can be enjoyed by anyone, at any time of their lives.

No matter the wine – be it a Hungarian Tokaj; a red Argentinian Malbec which is kept on radiators in family homes to be served warm; an Austrian Blaufränkisch which is fuchsia pink in the glass – wine is rich in its diversity. Vast, variegated, colourful, an assault to the senses. This is how it should be.

This article is an appeal to democratise wine. It is an appeal to older generations who can afford it, to share it with the young who are eager to try – just like Nick did. It is an appeal to young people to drink wine with friends – there are some pretty damn good wines that are only £4 a bottle. 

In her book Still Life, Sarah Winman writes about the relationship between humanity and art:

A meagre stain in the corridors of history, that’s all we are. A little mark of scuff. One hundred and fifty years ago Napoleon breathed the very same air we do now. The battalion of time marches on. Art versus humanity is not the question. One doesn’t exist without the other. Is that enough to make it important?

I would contend that her words apply more generally to the relationship between humanity and wine.

Wine versus humanity is not the question. One doesn’t exist without the other. 

And on that note, I propose a toast: to wine…to the drinking of wine…to the drinking of wine amongst friends and loved ones.