On grapes

On grapes


The other week, a colleague at work said, when talking about what wine she and her husband preferred, ‘I like a Chardonnay and my husband likes to drink Merlot’.

This response bothered me. Not because I disagree that either of these grapes makes excellent wine. Far from it. Chateau Petrus is made from Merlot and I would love to drink that regularly. Le Montrachet is made from Chardonnay and I wouldn’t mind a glass or two of that on a Friday night.

My issue with her response is that it is indicative of a trend in wine retailing – started in the new world - that dumbs down, simplifies and ultimately reduces pleasure. Buying a certain bottle of wine because you know the grape it is made from belongs to the school of ‘I know what I like and I like what I know’, which is reductive and ultimately leads us to Tesco and Starbucks, neither of which being a place I want to go.

Selling wines by their grape variety represents cheap and easy marketing. Just look at what has happened to Pinot Grigio. Massive marketing drives have seen it rise from being a fairly obscure Italian mutant (of the Pinot Noir) five years ago to something approaching supermarket shelf and world wine bar domination. But you know what will happen: in five years’ time, people won’t be saying, when asked in the pub what they would like, ‘Oh, ABC, darling, ABC,’ but ‘anything but PG, please’, because the mass marketing will create mass demand that will see mass retailers force lower and lower prices on to producers who will in turn produce a product of lower and lower quality. Chardonnay from South East Australia is just about undrinkable as are, to my taste at least, the mega brands from California.

If you drink only according to grape variety, chances are you only know to drink red wines called Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Tempranillo, Syrah or Pino Noir. If you drink white wines you are probably limiting yourself to Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc or possibly Chenin Blanc and Viognier (but probably not). Why do this? Why not decide to divide up your Friday wine-pound into monthly blocks of a country (France in December, Argentina in January, and Spain in February etc), or a region: Loire Valley in summer, Central Valley from Chile in winter? Why not buy something you know absolutely nothing about whatsoever? The worst thing that can happen is that you have a mildly unpleasant experience that costs you a fiver (or a tenner or whatever) and the best thing is that you could have a wonderful evening with a new life-long friend.



David Izod

August 9 2009