We don't need no education!

At the risk of sounding presumputous, I believe that I may have the answer to a long list of the problems that assail the world today, from Islamic extremism to teenage pregnancy, smoking, gun crime, gang warfare, drug and alcohol abuse... You name the issue and my solution stands a sporting chance of solving it. All we need to do in any of these cases is... to sprinkle it with a little pixie dust.

Ok, so I was being facetious. I shouldn't have said pixie dust. What I ought to have said was "education". There, now that makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? And unlike pixie dust, education really is the perfect word to utter when confronted with an intractable social issue. The second best thing about proposing education as a solution to the woes of the world is that almost no-one is going to disagree with you. Even professional contrarians like me are forced to nod sagely and acknowledge that yes, if everyone has been educated in the appropriate way, most of them will probably behave rather better. But that, as I say is only the second best thing. By far the best thing is that saying "education" is gloriously cheap in terms of money and effort. After all, much of the responsibility of actually cramming new ideas into possibly unwilling heads is always shunted along to someone else.

Which leaves the people who make and sell wine to go on making and selling wine, and the people who write about it to go on sharing their thoughts with the minority of the population that has already taken the trouble to listen to them. Education, for the wine industry, generally consists of holding tastings - for relatively small numbers of interested people - writing books and articles - generally for the same kind of interested readers - and trying - usually unsuccessfully - to get some mention of wine onto television or radio where it might hit a broader audience. Beyond this, there are efforts by industry-funded groups like Drinkaware in the UK to help parents and schools spread the word of moderation amongst the impressionable young. Though not, obviously, among their less impressionable parents, an apparently growing number of whom are doing irreversible damage to their their livers by drinking a bottle or so of wine every evening. (Some of you may have tripped over those words "apparently growing", but it's an inconvenient truth that alcohol-related liver disease has grown over fourfold in recent years in the UK, while the number of sufferers from all other major conditions is falling.)

Drinkaware does its best, producing packs that help schools and parents talk to children about alcohol and handing out grants to theatre companies to mount performances that encourage moderation. But even if/when Drinkaware gets the £5m annual budget it is projecting, this is a drop in the ocean when it comes to educating the public - especially when set against the drinks industry's £600-800m marketing budget. Now, it might not seem unreasonable to imagine that responsible adults who take the trouble to access the Drinkaware website to downoads that material might not be the ones in greatest need of help. But one might be wrong. While writing this, I have just talked to a French friend who lives in the UK and has worked in the wine industry. Last weekend she collected her 16 year old daughter from a party at which she and her friends were almost all too drunk to stand. Most, as she graphically described it, were lying in their own vomit.

These well brought up, middle class kids had all been "educated" by responsible parents about how to handle alcohol sensibly. Unfortunately, the vodka apparently trumped the education. But at least, when they sober up, my friend's daughter and her privately educated friends can read, write, divide and multiply reasonably proficiently. Unlike a frightening number of the young people who are currently on the job market. According to a 2011 survey of 500 of its members by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) over a third fail to meet basic mathematical skills and a terrifying 42% have inadequate literacy. These, don't forget, are young people who have recently emerged from being involuntarily educated on a daily basis.

When I raised the issue of wine-drinking middle class alcoholics last week and suggested that it might be a good idea for pubs to stop selling wine by the third-of-a-bottle, several people disagreed, saying that it was a "society" problem that needed a healthy dose of the "E" word. When I challenged one of these would-be educationalists to describe precisely how he would go about "educating" middle-aged, middle class men and women, he said that wasn't his job; he'd made a positive proposal. It was up to others to come up with ways to make it work.

Obviously, for reasons I've already explained, I'm not saying that education isn't a good idea; I'm merely pointing out that it's far, far easier to say than to implement with any success. And until someone proves that they really are using it as a remedy rather than a paliative, I think I'll go on making concrete suggestions for ways that the wine industry might try to address the problem rather than wait for the government to do so. Inconveniently, for people like me who don't like government regulation, there is some evidence that it can be rather more effective than the alternatives. In 2007, despite all the efforts of a broad array of well-meaning people (and quite a lot of education), 24% of under-18-year olds in the UK still opted to smoke. In that year, the government raised the legal age at which tobacco can be bought from 16 to 18. In 2010, according to a study by University College London, the proportion of young smokers had fallen to 17%. But then, I'm sure there are plenty of people who'll deny the existence of a connection between the two.

On reflection, I was wrong to pick on pixie dust as my solution to problems like alcohol abuse. Actually, cake would be a far better choice. I can see Marie Antoinette looking out at the revolting populace and uttering the words "let them be educated!"

Stop supersizing wine

"What can I do? It's up to society to deal with alcohol abuse. It's not the responsibility of the wine industry..." That was the response (through social media) of many wine professionals to my post on the Alastair Campbell "Britain's hidden alcoholics" programme. I did my best to point out that saying "If people use my product irresponsibly, it's not my concern" is precisely the argument put forward by gun manufacturers: hundreds of millions of US gun owners do themselves and others no harm with their weapons. But that hasn't stopped governments in most of the rest of the world from effectively preventing gun manufacturers from selling their wares. If industries don't self-regulate, they tend to find others will do the job for them. Often in ways they find distasteful.

Which brings me to a campaign I've just kicked off to encourage a bit of self regulation in the UK and Australia - against the 250ml serving in bars and pubs. The idea of putting a third of a bottle of wine into a glass is a recent notion, with no tradition in the UK or elsewhere. When it's part of a round-buying culture, unlike the sale of bottles or carafes, it actually encourages excessive drinking . How many people drinking their big glass of red or white know that they're actually consuming 50% more alcohol than their beer-drinking companion? (Which is ironic when one considers that the beer drinker is more likely to be male and the wine drinker female).

This is most emphatically not a spoilsport, "wowser" (to use the Australian expression), anti-alcohol move. When I'm in a bar or pub, I usually buy a bottle or carafe and a few glasses and may well end up drinking much more than the two or three units my doctor would advise. But I'm not putting any pressure on anyone else to drink at my speed. Conversely I'm not pressured to drink at theirs.

So, I've set up a Facebook group called stop.supersizing.wine If you agree that there is nothing very civilised about selling wine by the bucket, please join it and, more usefully still, spread the word. My plan is to get a lot of names, including some influential ones, on board and shame the on trade into voluntarily dropping the glasses - before the government forces them to do so.

Japanese miniatures

Water colours or oils? Chamber music or orchestral? Those were the kinds of questions that sprang to mind as I tasted my way through a series of Japan’s best Koshus. For anyone unfamiliar with this Japanese grape (a description that I’d imagine applies to 99.9999% of wine consumers), it is a pink skinned vinifera grown in Yamanashi, a region close to Mount Fuji. It is Japan’s most widely grown wine variety but with less than 500 ha of vineyards, it represents a smaller-than-homeopathic drop in the global bucket. One might imagine that Japan’s 150m population would be able to consume it all over not very many meals, but the producers are evidently keen to export and have taken on a highly respected Master of Wine called Lynne Sherriff to help them develop sales in Europe.

Three years into this process, sales are still tiny (one sommelier says he hand-sold 10 bottles last year) but Ms Sherriff has undeniably created something of a Koshu buzz among the great and good. Last week, Jancis Robinson, Steven Spurrier, Anthony Rose and the (surprisingly humorous) Japanese ambassador) were among the group at Hibiscus restaurant to sample 13 wines with a set of dishes.

So back to those water colours. Koshu is either delightfully subtle or flavour-challenged, depending on your point of view and taste. At its best, it has a very floral (rose, honeysuckle and violet) nose (arguably its best point) and a creamy flavour that reminds me of a light, apple puree and egg-white pudding my mother used to make called apple snow. Some also have notes of quince and sweet spice, but none is flavour-packed. An oaked version from Suntory illustrated the problem with this grape; to my mind it looked like a fragile beauty caked in (high quality) makeup. A sparkling example was unsuccessful for a different reason: it simply did not have enough flavour for the bubbles.

Even the best of these watery-pale wines are challenging though. Serve them as an aperitif to non wine-buff friends and there’s a high risk of them being swallowed without anyone pausing to think about what’s in their glasses. Put them with any flavoursome dish and they will probably suffer the same fate. Maybe you should save them for the day when you are preparing a very, very plainly cooked flat fish.

My own experience of the variety is actually slightly wider than many of the others at the lunch because eight or so years ago I was one of a pair of overseas judges at the first Japan Wine Competition at which I sipped and spat a long series of examples, often struggling to find words to describe their fleeting flavours. My favourites then were, I discovered, still among my favourites today: Grace (the only one to have overt gingerbread and clove spice) and Rubaiyat (the most quince-like), along with L’Orient (maybe the most complex) and Marquis (which combines lemon rind with the apple).

I have no idea where these wines fit into my or any non-Japanese wine drinker’s repertoire; they are a bit like a subtly-patterned tie that goes very well with a shirt one rarely wears. In this, they are not unlike the best examples of Swiss Chasselas and, like those wines, should definitely be sealed under screwcaps to maintain their freshness

What's the frequency?

“My grandparents drink wine every day. I remember, when I was about 6 years old [15 years ago], my parents used to do that too. Now it’s when they see friends or for more special meals. Once or twice a week. Maybe three times...”

Single conversations should not be accorded undue significance, but when they seem to illustrate statistical trends it’s worth paying them a little attention. The words in the first paragraph were spoken by a bright, wine-enthusiastic 21 year old French girl studying for her wine business Masters at the Dijon Business School. Her parents live in Rasteau where they have a vineyard and are members of the cooperative. Yes, that’s right, 50-something year-olds who grow grapes for a living now drink wine less frequently than many lawyers and doctors in London or New York.

It would be easy to dismiss these people as oddities, but as I say, they seem to illustrate official French statistics that show over a third of the population as officially non-wine-drinkers. (The figure for women is close to 50%). The 21 year old’s comment also reflects research findings that link regular consumption to advanced age. Every time an old Frenchman dies, the average per-capita consumption fractionally drops...

Later in the same conversation, there was another little insight. “When I worked at the cellar door [in Rasteau] pouring wine for visitors, the men liked the [Cotes du Rhone] red and white but the women often said they found it too dry. And when that happened, the men didn’t buy...”

As I say, it’s just an anecdote and easy to dismiss. Especially if you’re an ostrich-minded member of the wine industry (a large proportion of the breed, I fear), or someone who simply enjoys a daily glass or two and wants to see others gain the pleasure you do. Not forgetting the health benefits.

But there’s the rub. Or couple of rubs. Most of the articles I’ve read suggest that those health benefits are actually associated with daily doses of a very small glass – and certainly not the half bottle favoured by many who believe themselves to be moderate wine drinkers. In fact significant risk of serious liver damage apparently begins at four bottles per week. In other words, half a bottle a night and an extra half with your Sunday lunch is not exactly what the doctor ordered.

Then there’s the officially-sanctioned suggestion that we should all take a couple of alcohol-free days per week to avoid becoming dependent. I can think of plenty of my wine industry friends who find the idea almost unimaginable (“I can’t remember the last day I didn’t have at least a glass”). But how many other mind- and body-altering substances would we all feel happy about ingesting every 24 hours? Caffeine is the obvious riposte, and maybe a similar weekly break from that drug would be no bad thing either for those of us who can easily down two or three cups each tea and coffee between dawn and dusk...

So, over to you, dear reader. What’s your frequency? Daily? Once, twice or thrice weekly?

Reaction to Alastair Campbell's BBC Panorama programme: "Britain's hidden alcoholics"

“I wish people would stop going on about binge drinking and the supposed damage caused by alcohol. The anti alcohol lobby simply wants to stop us all from enjoying ourselves. Obviously some people abuse alcohol, but they’re mostly kids over-indulging in spirits, RTDs and beer. Most wine drinkers consume in moderation and with food and wine is actually good for one's health. Get off our backs!”

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“I wish people would stop going on about excessive bonuses and the damage they do to our social structure. The banker-bashing lobby simply wants to stop us all making a bit of money. Obviously some people get bonuses that are a bit too big, but they’re just the chief execs who pocket a few million every year. Most bankers are like me. We work hard and earn our £250k bonuses and without banking, where would our economy be? Get off our backs!“

Reading and listening to wine industry reaction to efforts by the medical profession to reduce consumption is remarkably reminiscent of the bankers' response to any suggestion that their bonuses are abusive.

Alastair Campbell's programme was thoughtful and thought-provoking. People who hate its presenter's role in the lead up the the Iraq war (and possibly his role as Tony Blair's right-hand-man) can use that hatred to dismiss everything he said - and his frank description of his experience as an alcoholic. Some of those same people may also dislike Anne Robinson enough to sidestep the Weakest Link presenter's account of her alcoholism. But what about the middle class company director who described how his wine drinking had almost destroyed his liver? And the 30-year-old designer who talked about how she had switched from vodka to wine, and lost all control of her life?

It's harder too, to shut one's mind to the ambulance men revealing that the majority of the alcohol-damaged people they are scraping off the street are business people in suits. harder too to dismiss the doctors who point out that liver disease (at which the significant risk begins at around half a bottle of wine per per day) is the only medical condition to be on the rise in the UK (by 4-500% in recent years).

As one of the doctors insightfully commented: in Britain, we've adopted the European habit of drinking wine with our meals but we haven't dropped our tradition of boozing without food. So we do both - and end up with the worst of all worlds.

Even assuming that we can honestly say that we don't need that half a bottle of wine (or so) we routinely enjoy every day, we should pause before ignoring the huge incidence of quiet wine-driven alcohol abuse to be found in suburban streets around the country, or pretending that it isn't there. Unless we want to behave like those bankers...

Dinner priorities

Imagine for a moment, you are joining five of your friends who are already sitting at a restaurant table. They are all tucking into plates of the same delicious roast chicken but the contents of their glasses differ. Al is drinking Cotes du Rhone; Bea is sipping at a Riesling; Carl’s tankard is full of Guiness; Dee is on water and Ed has a Coke.

Ok, let’s change the picture. The same five friends are sitting at the same table. This time, they all have glasses of a delicious Cotes du Rhone (probably the one Al was drinking in the other scenario) but as you’ll have guessed, it’s the food that’s diverse. Al is eating the same chicken as before, Bea is relishing a prawn curry, Carl is enjoying a slice of rare roast beef, Dee has decided to pass and Ed has a slice of chocolate cake.

Setting aside the deliberate exaggeration, the first picture is one you might be more likely to encounter in the US, where restaurants have more dynamic wine-by-the-glass programmes; the second reflects the European tradition of diners tending to compromise over which bottle of wine they will all drink with their varied dishes.

My question is “given the fact that you are going to be sitting at these tables with your friends, does one of the scenarios appeal to you more than the other. If so, which would it be? And why?

My own view, for what it’s worth, is that if it’s a dinner with friends, I’d be equally happy with either. And yes, I do have friends who drink Coke with their chicken and wouldn’t mind washing their chocolate cake down with a glass of red.

People are fascinated by potatoes

Whenever I tell people that I know a little about potatoes, there's a brief pause while - as I now appreciate - they privately relish the prospect of being able to broaden their knowledge of a subject in which so many of them are fascinated. I tell them about the 4,000 varieties of potato, all of which probably come from one place in Peru. I remind them that the roast potato on our plate is of the same family as the deadly nightshade, and that man domesticated potatoes 8,000 years ago and that they first arrived in Asia in around 1600, a few decades before they were introduced to Europe. Then I go on to list some of my favourite types of potato - Désirée, King Edward, Maris Piper and Highland Burgundy Red - and the best ways to cook them.

Of course there are some - you might be among them - who are surprised to learn about the depth of general interest in potatoes. But just think how many we all eat, and the range of potatoes that are now on offer in supermarkets. Just consider the evidence: the popularity of websites like lovepotatoes, and the number of online references to potatoes. Try googling "potatoes" and you'll find there are a staggering 377,000,000 results.

I'm joking of course (though not about that google statistic). I actually know very little about potatoes. Like most other humans, I enjoy eating them in a number of forms and could, if tortured, list a maximum of half a dozen varieties (a list that wouldn't include Highland Burgundy Red by the way). You may have read my first paragraph with a growing hunger for a lot more information - or you may have thought "that's enough for the moment thank you..." And you might actually have even questioned the title of this post. "No", you might have thought, "people may have a passing curiosity about potatoes, but they're not really that interested in them".

Which is precisely what I'd say about wine. At best, to judge by the number of sites on offer by Google (919,000,000), they are more than a third as interested in wine, with its myriad varieties and place in western culture as in the humble spud.

People who are interested in anything tend to imagine that large numbers of other people share their enthusiasm - or would if given the chance and the encouragement. In a few cases they can justify that belief. Tens of millions of viewers do tune into watch soccer matches. These sorts of numbers do not show any visible signs of a fascination with wine. They don't buy large numbers of books or magazines or read blogs. When newspapers drop their wine columns or columnists, the protests are audible but limited.

The he enthusiasts blame negative forces. We would, they claim, have lots more wine columns in newspapers and wine programmes on television if it weren't for narrow-minded publishers and tv companies who won't let people have them. It's only a lack of advertising, they say, that explains the lack of wine columns - while conveniently overlooking the absence of regular articles on watches in publications that are full of Rolex ads.

The point behind this post is that a misplaced belief in a widespread interest in wine handily removes the need for wine producers to make an effort to engage with potential buyers. When these enthusiasts say things like "surely there is a difficulty that's inherent in the complexity that we most like about wine?" and "I look for information on the internet first, then I buy" (both direct quotes), they reveal the gulf that lies between them and the vast majority of normal potato eaters and wine drinkers.

Why do you do what you do? (a question for professionals)

Why do you make wine - and make it in the way you do? Or choose and sell wine that somebody else has made? Beyond doing so as a way to pay your bills? (Please ponder your answer and scroll down)
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Okay, to my mind, there's only one top level answer:

"to give somebody something they - and possibly their friends/family around them - are going to enjoy drinking, and for a price they think reasonable".

Everything beyond that - thoughts such as "expressing the terroir of my region" should be secondary. Because, if it isn't a pleasurable drink, why should anyone but the most obsessive wine geek, care about the terroir?

If this seems a little simplistic to you, I'm sorry, but I think it raises some pretty fundamental questions. If you're faced with a rainy, cold vintage, do you avail yourself of the 15% allowance to make your wine prettier? If you've made your first pure Sangiovese or Gruner Veltliner in a place where it's never been grown before, and it's pleasant enough but one-dimensional, do you simply bottle it and sell it for a (relatively high) price that reflects your costs of production, or do you decide not to sell this vintage (blending it instead into something else)? Or improve it by adding a small dose of something else?

Most winemakers I know prefer to follow the purist line, allowing their customers to experience the unripe grapes or simple flavours. But why? If they were cooks they would be a lot less happy to send out a dish they knew to be sub-standard. There aren't many restaurants where waiters say "Sorry if the steak's tough, but that was the best the butcher could provide".

In the old days, when there were far fewer regions and far fewer decent vintages, second-rate wine was something people often had to put up with. Today, no one needs to drink - or eat - anything they don't enjoy.

Food - and drink - for thought.

Sweet baby roo

Following up on my post about Moscato, here's the latest baby from Yellow Tail, along with a link to the press release

The next big thing

They say there’s nothing you can bet on with a cast-iron guarantee of being right - apart from the inexorability of death and taxes. Well, here’s my best shot at a sure-fire winner for the wine industry. The next big thing - the thing that ’s going to make Pinot Grigio look like an unusually small Smurf, is going to be… Moscato.

Now, you may possibly have read those last few words without letting forth as much as a silent groan, but if you didn’t even wince, you’re probably in a minority. I know, because I’ve had a fair few conversations with all sorts of wine people over the last few weeks, and the ones that have have accepted my prediction with any kind of equanimity are the exceptions to the rule. By far the most bothered have probably been the winemakers, and most especially the winemakers who suspect that a likely result of any kind of Moscato boom will include their actually having to turn Muscat grapes into a sweet, grapey beverage.

Before considering why the wine world is likely to treat a global Moscato Moment as though it were the next worst thing to the emergence of a virulent breed of resistant phylloxera, perhaps it’s time for me to explain why I’m so sure I’m right. And why I’d go as far as to say that if Muscat didn’t exist, some clever people would be currently working flat out to invent it.

Just consider the way most red, white and pink wines taste, and the way Moscato tastes. Which of these most closely resembles most of the stuff most people most enjoy drinking? Fruit juice, Coca Cola, Red Bull, tonic water and every other kind of non alcoholic beverage… they’re all sweet. As is a Starbucks Grande Latte, by the way, which, at 17g of sugar, has one and three quarters as much sweetness as a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut. All of these drinks have helped lay the foundations for Moscato, but so have a fair few bottles of wine. A litre of average Pinot Grigio may easily have five or six grams of sugar; Yellow Tail Merlot and a wide range of reds have weighed in at 10g/l or more, while Extra Dry Prosecco can be up at 17g/litre. Just behind White Zinfandel at 20g.

For most modern purists, the very idea of semi-sweet and frankly sweet wine - unless it has been blessed by botrytis - is anathema. Even Germany, historically home of some of the most glorious naturally sweet Kabinetts, is now marching to the beat of the dry, dry drum. But Germany is far from the only place that has turned its back on sweet wine.

Bordeaux once produced an ocean of - pretty filthy, it must be said - sugary white wine. Until a Frenchman called Louis Oudart was invited to Piedmont by the Marchesa di Barolo, the most famous wine of her region would have often been sweet. In those days, Champagne was often also lusciously sweet, making it a far better partner for pudding than the brut that is often wasted on this stage of the meal today.

Sweet wines have crept back onto the shelves over the last few years. In some countries, this has been in the shape of frankly sugary pinks - one of the huge successes of the last few years - while in others it has been in the form of reds that have been sweetened after fermentation. In the US, the latest trend has been the arrival of smartly packaged wines such as Sweet Bliss White (90g/l) and Adler Fels’ recently launched Totally Random Sweet Red. Sales of frankly labeled sweet wines in the US are currently up to 500,000 cases. Not a huge amount when viewed in the context of the market as a whole, but still pretty significant, given the fact that this was acategory thar did not exist at all a few years ago.

If unashamedly sweet reds and whites are now becoming socially acceptable, the stage seems to be perfectly set for the entrance of a grape with a sexy-sounding Italian name and a deliciously grapey flavour. In the US, Moscato is already on a roll. According to the August 18 2011 edition of Market Watch, it was the fastest growing varietal in America with brands like Gallo’s Barefoot and Woodbridge seeing a tenfold increase in sales over the last three years.

If the US loves Moscato, there are plenty of other markets that are likely to share its enthusiasm. At DoILikeIt? we carried out some research before Christmas in the UK that involved giving Moscato to food and wine enthusiasts as part of a blind line-up. While there were plenty who dismissed it as being too sweet for their taste, over half embraced it. Less formal research with Chinese female wine drinkers revealed even greater potential for the style.

For wine purists, who rarely imagine drinking this kind of drink themselves, the trend smacks of barbarism. I choose to differ. I happen to love fresh, good examples of Moscato and would much rather be offered a well chilled glass on a hot day sitting by a swimming pool than a long list of great dry reds and whites. But that’s not my point. I can also easily understand why a large number of people whose other favourite drinks include Coke, latte, gin-and-tonic and orange juice might also prefer a frankly grapey beverage to a tannic, weedily unripe-tasting basic red or white with an authentically earthy gout de terroir.

Disclosure. I'm putting my own money where my mouth is, by speculatively shipping a few cases of le Grand Noir Languedoc Moscato to the US and launching a study into Chinese reactions to the style. Watch this space.