Introducing The Dabbler’s new wine correspondent…
My name is Henry Jeffreys and I’m a wine bore. Few of my friends share my interest so I started a blog as an outlet for all the useless knowledge I was accumulating. I don’t drink good wine to show off and I don’t only drink the most esoteric stuff. If a wine is good and cheap then all the better. I drink wine because of the infinite variety of delicious things to try.
But every so often a piece appears in the papers saying that the only reason to drink anything but the cheapest stuff is snobbery. The latest barbarian assault occurred in the Guardian recently. There is something about the hierarchical nature of wine that really annoys the socialists. Nevertheless I feel that the home of Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column should know better.
The science correspondent Ian Sample reported on a test conducted by a psychologist Richard Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire at the Edinburgh Science Festival (roll up! tickets still available). Members of the public were given two similar wines, ie. two clarets or two pinot grigios, to taste blind. One was expensive, over £10 a bottle. and one cheap, under £5. They were then asked to say which they thought was the most expensive. People were only right roughly 50% of the time; they might as well have chosen at random.
I have a few thoughts on this experiment:
1) By what criteria were the members of the public asked to guess which was the more expensive? This may sound pedantic but if you ask people to guess which is more expensive are they going to guess the one they like the most?
2) Were the people chosen interested in wine? This matters, if people were merely choosing the one they liked the most then many people would go for the cheaper wine. Cheap wines are normally fruitier with less acidity and more sugar than expensive ones. They appeal to people who aren’t interested in wine.
3) If the people aren’t interested in wine then they have no frame of reference. It would be like asking someone with no knowledge of classical music to guess from a tiny snatch of music which was Gutav Holst and which was John Williams. All they would be told is that Holst is more highly regarded by music snobs. Now guess which is which!
Some other factors spring to mind: the expensive claret may have been very young or the bottle may have just been opened or it may have been the kind of wine which really needs food to show at its best. It may simply have been rubbish and the under £5 one was actually more delicious.
So what conclusions can we draw from this experiment? Some people prefer cheaper wine? Some people can’t tell the difference between expensive or cheap? The Edinburgh Science Festival needed some publicity? The one conclusion that you couldn’t draw is the one the Guardian journalist drew:
“An expensive wine may well have a full body, a delicate nose and good legs, but the odds are your brain will never know.”
Good stuff Henry, I’ve subscribed to your blog, looks terrific! Like many others with an interest for wine, it was time spent working in a wine shop that got me interested in all things vinous. One thing I soon learned was that there are lots of people who hanker after buying vintage bottles of claret and champagne (thinking it to be strong and magic of flavour) who are then very disappointed when they finally drink some and discover that it tastes ‘tricky’. I think so called fine wines are like freeform jazz or smallpox, you have to build up a tolerance to them
Keep it coming Henry, the more pretension we cosign to the scrapheap the merrier we shall be. like Worm I spent some months working in a wins shop in Grey street whilst waiting for a proper job, acquiring a taste for wine, gin, whisky, ginger ale, tonic water, cider, sherry, port, Buckfast, Pimms, Martini, Grappa, Broon ale and stuff. Back when we plebs had such esoteric plonk as Spanish Sauternes plus Cypriot sherry to satisfy our Niles Crane instincts. Later, egged on by Oddbins and the Times wine club we flourished.
Pretension prickers of the world unite, snotty nosed snobs, your time is over, the grey havens await, or a least a good (plastic) bottle of Salford Chardonnay.
I’m a ‘wine-lover’ in the sense that someone who likes Dan Brown novels is a ‘book-lover’ – I consume with ignorant pleasure. But I am certainly willing to acknowledge that genuine connoisseurs aren’t faking it and I buy your argument completely, Henry.
Whisky I find easier to appreciate – the subtleties seem less, um, subtle.
All hail, Henry, King of Booze! I love your blog and am so happy you’re now a correspondent here. Keep up the good work. The wine world needs more writers like you who aren’t equal parts pedantic-talking-head-fool and colorless dullard.
Wine connoisseurs statements, the Geordie variety…”it’s got a flat bottom, it can’t be proper wine then”
Ah, yes, Miss Hollywood. You’re so right about the “colourless dullards” who write about wine. To read them, you’d have to believe there is no alcohol in it.
Welcome Henry. It would be good, for the first time since Auberon Waugh, to take pleasure in reading about wine.
Recusant – apart from Henry’s excellent blogging, a very enjoyable book about wine (that is enjoyable in it’s own right, even if you know little about wine) is Hugh Johnson’s Wine:A life Uncorked, available new in hardback for 1p on amazon!
I like Johnson but my favourite wine writer is Patrick Matthews – author of the Wild Bunch. He doesn’t spit or assign spurious points. Instead he’s endlessly curious. His last book – Real Wine – came out in 2000 and then he disappeared. Last I heard he has set up a Falafal stand in Hoxton square.
Jamie Goode has done a bit of investigating and found out that the people involved in this test were not given two drinks to try, instead they were given one and asked to say whether it was cheap or expensive. So the experiment was even more stupid than I first thought and the Guardian’s report of the experiment was even more misleading/ ignorant.
http://www.wineanorak.com/wineblog/wine-science/the-wiseman-‘study’-–-cheap-versus-expensive-wine
Good work Mr Goode.
“Last I heard he has set up a Falafal stand in Hoxton square.”
That’s writing for you….
would be a good euphamism for some sort of purgatory, a sort of nearly-death
Terrific post Henry. I’m pleased you’ve taken The Guardian to task for that dreadful survey. I was in a foul mood all day after I read it!
I think the big division in wine – more so than cheap or expensive, white or red – is whether it’s a glugger (for swilling down in the way you would a beer) or a sipper (only really enjoyable with food). The sippers tend to be more expensive (though most champagne is a glugger) – but context is crucial in determining whether you’ll really enjoy them.