Many relevant and well stated suggestions - especially article 7 IMO. The hospitality industry - including the many social and golf clubs - needs to re-imagine the role of wine in enhancing an experience while supporting moderation in alcohol consumption - rather than the sole source of profit!!! Perhaps if people slowed down to enjoy meals more fully their happiness quotient would be improved.
And conversely, article 5 is completely inappropriate on a couple of fronts. Non-consumption of alcohol does not correlate with being a despot, and the inclusion of POTUS with the other three is a very hard case to make on an objective front. Please focus on wine!
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Some well-stated suggestions, the biggest issue is how to foster change? I believe #7 is a huge issue- wine is way too expensive, that is the primary reason people are drinking less, especially younger people with less disposable income. The wine BTG pricing is out of control, especially in cities like NYC, where I live. How can the wine business incentivize restaurants to charge less and stop using wine as their cash cow? The industry needs creative, multi-pronged responses like NYCâs Long Count that only serve wines 10+ years old, and offer them at reasonable $ - most $15-20.
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âArticle 5 Wine in moderation at table can also build healthy character in our leaders. Taking a quick unscientific look at rolls of abstainers, I see Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Putin and POTUS â imbalanced narcissists all. American presidents with wine cellars started with Washington and Jefferson, leading up to our modern-day, wine-loving presidents from two sides of the political spectrum, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan â all admired for their personal qualities.â
Personally, I find this one absurd - âunscientificâ is doing a lot of heavy lifting. For sure, Hitler and Mussolini were teetotallers, but then so were Abraham Lincoln and Gandhi, who, strangely enough, didnât get mentioned; not many people pick out the Gettysburg address and see it as a mark of lack of civilisation caused by failure to drink wine.
Iâm not a teetotaller myself and donât advocate it, but itâs just a silly point to make.
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I am not convinced that wine is way too expensive. In the UK bottles can be had for ÂŁ3.99, but the wine is about 40p and you pay the government about ÂŁ3 in tax, so low price is bad value.
A bottle of wine is only too expensive if you cannot afford to buy it. I accept some wines attract high prices but there are loads more that are quite cheap.
My son and our cousinâs son of about the same age drink spiced rum. I have never tried it so cannot comment. I have no idea what youngsters generally drink these days.
âWine in moderationâ is an abstract concept which is all very vague and virtually meaningless.
Agreed, wine in general is not too expensive. Here in the US, we have a specific issue that does not exist in Europe, or largely in the UK, where on-premise (restaurants) charge the full wholesale cost of a bottle BTG. The revenue from wine sales drives profitability (a small margin, very tough business) - but is doing long-term damage to the wine industry,
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Thanks for posting this! Some good points, and I broadly agree with the proposed âsocial contractâ but not completely.
I agree with Article 7, broadly speaking, given that this can make wine unaffordable in restaurants. This varies by market, though, and isnât inevitably the case here in Italy, for example. Also, I think itâs worth remembering that the hospitality industry is struggling in many countries, so they might not easily be able to take the reduction in profit easily. I am also keen to see more restaurants offer good by the glass and half bottle programmes.
For Article 10, while I also donât want to be âinterrupted by a server who has been trained to explain the technical details of what you are about to eat or drinkâ, it would be nice to have a waiter who does know some technical details about the food and wine. This isnât always a given!
Also, for article 1, I note that I recently visited a winery in Alto Adige and they noted many wineries locally are now producing premium cuvĂ©es in the âŹ60-âŹ100 range because there is now a lot of demand for them, primarily from new local 5 star hotels. Guests who are spending âŹ500 on a meal want a local wine thatâs equally ambitious / ambitiously priced to pair with it. (Honestly I guess this ties in with what Iâve read elsewhere, that as the middle class shrinks catering for the newly rich is now more lucrative than catering for the average person. But thatâs another topic.)
Oh, and Article 2. I agree, but the word âexcessiveâ will provoke argument. At what point is alcohol/oak/brett/VA âexcessiveâ? Different people will have different tolerances and preferences, so I doubt there will be firm agreement on this any time soon.
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I was particularly interested in Point 6 What is in your wine? Every week I write up brief(but getting longer) notes on the three wines that our little wine group have tried that week. This has lead me to scrutinise the information on the back of the wine bottle with great care. Recently I started checking the QR codes. With all food and drink in the EU details of what is in the product have to be declared for information and allergy advice. For wine this is done via the QR code on the bottle.. As this is recent legislation older wines donât have a code and imported wines may not have them at the moment. The information supplied varies from wine to wine. Some just list ingredients others link to a full fact sheet. In just a few weeks I have started to learn about the use of carboxymethyl cellulose to stabilise white wines for example. I will be interested to find out how the ingredients of more expensive wines compare with their cheaper cousins. It is a small start.
We have learnt so much from wine tasting including history, geography, genetics, climate, geology, graphic design and marketing to name just a few. and we get to drink the wine. Perfect!
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It seems like you are familiar with the new ingredient labelling but you might find my 2024 article on this topic of interest.
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Thanks Julia for coming back to me so quickly on this topic. To say I am familiar with the new labelling is generous but I am learning by using it.
I joined JancisRobinson.com at the end of December 2023 but I must have missed your article. As I got more interested in the contents of the bottle of wine I have picked up the information on ingredient labelling in the OCW (P375). However your article is extremely informative and I have printed it out and added it to my information file, (alongside Samâs MBT Part 2) for easy reference. Apart from anything else it throws some light on the winemaking process. It all goes towards enjoying the wine.
Mary for Wickham Wine Group
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