When anyone says “I just don’t have the palate for wine” or “I can’t taste all those ‘things’ other people talk about in wine” I try to point out that we pretty much all have exactly the same ability to taste, but we all have different experiences, vocabulary and confidence.

It isn’t that they CAN’T taste wines, they simply are not used to analysing what they are experiencing, often because they haven’t really bothered before.

It is a matter of education, not in the sense of classes and diplomas, but just taking the time to taste, and most importantly, SMELL things.

The importance of smell to the enjoyment of wine starts early.

I was reminded of this only yesterday morning. On our arrival at the airport (at 6 am after an overnight flight), a fellow passenger managed to smash a 1.5 litre bottle of dark rum he had bought Duty Free (probably for the best!).

I barely paid attention, though noticed ‘a’ smell.

My wife complained about the “smell of alcohol”

But my daughter (only 5, and rather hyper after the flight) said, “What was that Daddy? I think it was a bottle of vanilla. I used some with grandma and that’s what it smelled like. Why did he have a bottle of vanilla, Daddy”

She’s absolutely right. It DID smell of vanilla more than anything else (that she’s used to smelling).

When was the last time you took a second to ’smell’ vanilla? I’m off to do it right now!

Let’s encourage kids to smell and discuss food, ingredients …  even wine … then hopefully we will all enjoy experiencing things more, even alcohol spillages at airports.

In the last few days, I’ve come to a realisation that there is something unpleasant that wine & football share, and it involves people falling over.

(Yes, this is my gratuitous World Cup post, including a tenuous, though hopefully interesting, link to wine).

I decided a long time ago, following the Heysel Stadium Disaster to be precise, that I didn’t really care for football, a.k.a. soccer (or most sports to be honest). However, I do care about sport in general, particularly with regard to making sure my kids enjoy a healthy and fun lifestyle. I do enjoy watching occasional, hopefully high quality, games at the final of big events such as Wimbledon, the Olympics and the Ryder Cup. I rarely care who wins, I just enjoy the moment, the excitement and, I hope, the spectacle of sportsmanship.

So, like I said, I don’t like football.

I did watch some of the World Cup, particularly as I had some personal stake in Spain doing well, and so I thought I would use the opportunity to let my 5 year-old daughter stay up late to watch her very first World Cup Final. What an opportunity.

What a mistake!

Fouls, dirty play, few chances and, in general, a poor showcase for the sport. She went to bed at half time excited and high on the adrenaline from the aggression rather than the quality of play.

What made it worse was the excuse by the Dutch coach saying:

“It was still our intention to play beautiful football, but we were facing a very good opponent. … We did a good job tactically on them. We got into good positions at times. It’s not our style, but you play a match to win.”

Is that what I have to tell my daughter?

It reminded me that a few days earlier we had watched 7 year old boys at her school playing football in an early morning coaching session. In the 5 minutes or so that we were there, several kids not only fell over on the ground after fairly innocuous tackles, but lay there, clutching their legs and heads in absolute agony … until it was time to take the free kick. At one point, a child literally dragged his mate off the ball by the arm, and when challenged, he uttered these words:

“But that’s what they do in football”

Who are these kids’ role models? Any guesses?*

(* If there isn’t a football equivalent of the Razzies, celebrating the most theatrical acting on the pitch, there should be)

Wine, or more generally, alcohol, suffers from a similar issue. What do kids think about wine? Where do they see it being consumed?

• On television – only when it is a major part of a plot, usually involving a drunken adult, probably doing something inappropriate, funny or violent.
• In the pub or at parties – when they may be invited along where adults, not necessarily their parents, are likely to get carried away.
• On the street – and none of us like seeing that.
• At home

If we want kids to have a healthy attitude to alcohol, we need to give them experiences and role models to use. This does not meet not drinking around children as some suggest. Don’t get DRUNK around children, but do show them how adults can enjoy their drinks responsibly.

Just as it is a shame that my daughter’s first major lesson about football was about yellow cards versus red cards, we don’t want their first lessons about alcohol to be about hangovers, aggression and car accidents. Hopefully we can be more positive.

If parents, or any of us, aren’t acting as fair role models, where else will children turn to for guidance? What you don’t want is to see your child, hanging onto his friend’s arm, falling to the ground saying:

“But that’s what they do in the pub”

—–

For more information, please check out the campaign being run by Wine In Moderation, a pan-European programme promoting responsible and moderate wine consumption

Other references:

The Alcohol Education and Research Council: See (“Why do people drink at home? An exploration of the perceptions of adult home consumption practice“)

[still trying to find research I once saw where UK consumers placed "To get drunk" at the top of a list of "Reasons why you drink"]

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• Cruyff slams ‘anti-football’ (skysports.com)
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Ever since I heard that Majestic would be moving out from under the arches at Bank End, the warren of brick tunnels between Borough Market and the Thames, home to Vinopolis, I wondered what would be happening there.

It was quickly announced that Laithwaites, one of the key retailing brands of the MASSIVE Direct Wines, the king of direct mail wine suppliers in this country, including The Sunday Times Wine Club and countless others, was to take over the space. I wondered how they would be using the opportunity. They already had a number of shops as well as their direct mail business, but this was a big change for them.

I was not disappointed by the effort they have made to make this a pleasant and welcoming shopping experience. Check it out yourself:

Although the Majestic shop that had been there was a bit of an institution, its warehouse style presentation, that works well in its shops around the country, didn’t quite fit the end of the Vinopolis experience. Much as I enjoy shopping in Majestic stores as a wine lover, they can be rather daunting to some, and moving from the Vinopolis Tour to a roomful of thousands of wines was a bit like getting someone to watch a single episode of The F Word then expecting them to run the kitchens at one of Gordon Ramsey’s restaurants.

The choice, presentation and decisions were rather overwhelming. Maybe even off-putting.

I hope Laithwaites apparent focus on the tasting table, and the space to explore around the displays, will be more welcoming for novice wine drinkers. I also hope they keep the range of wines available to taste as broad (and non-exclusive) as possible.

I didn’t have much time to look at the full range available. I did notice some well-known names from Australia, New Zealand, Spain and also a range of ‘Fine Wine’ (usually £20+ per bottle) but I wonder what regular consumers will make of the lack of the brands they are used to seeing in high street retailers for context?

In any case, let’s hope the site helps to welcome many more consumers to the enjoyment, variety and culture of wine.

The official opening is on February 19th (according to Tony Laithwaites blog) but you can already pop in today.

Disclaimer: in my professional role for wineries in Rioja, I am involved in supplying 1 wine to Laithwaites.

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Colonel Pickering: How do you do it, may I ask?

Henry Higgins: Simple phonetics. The science of speech. That’s my profession. Also my hobby. Anyone can spot an lrishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue … but I can place a man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets.

An off-hand comment on twitter prompted me to think a little deeper about one of those ‘common knowledge’ aspects of the wine world, that there exists some sort of difference between the Old World and the New World. But what does that mean? More importantly, can it help?

It makes sense to group the sources of the wine we drink into easy to understand and separate groups – its shorthand for helping to make decisions. The simplest has always been “Old vs New” and by definition it is Old = Europe (& the Mediterranean) and New = the Rest of the World. But why?

It is meant to be about how old the wine making traditions are, of course, but even many ‘New’ countries have been making wine for around 300 years.

The question that prompted this soul searching was whether Japan should be considered an Old or New wine producer. China and Japan have very ancient wine traditions (of sorts), but they are not what we normally think of as “Old World”.

How does this Old & New dichotomy help anyway?

What it probably meant when it was first adopted was that the Old world made the wine we were used to drinking in the UK (and other wine drinking European countries) and the New world was the source of the ‘new’ wines; with ‘new’ ways of making them based more on science than tradition and ‘terroir’, and ‘new’ ways of marketing them.

If that is the case, it was probably true 30 years ago, but much has changed in that time. If you’ve ever heard stories about wine tasters that could identify a wine by region, grower, and vintage, (and possibly slope of vineyard, etc.) then many date back to this time. It is MUCH harder today. Henry Higgins would be hard pressed to apply his “scientific” approach to identifying the accent of a wine today!

Much of what was good about the ‘new’ science of winemaking has now been adopted in the ‘Old’ world wineries, and concepts such as terroir and artisan winemaking are making inroads in non European wine producers’ wineries too.

What it means is that the terms Old & New are not so much about WHERE in the world the wine is made any more. It makes more sense to think of them as HOW the wine is made.

It can mean that a wine from Europe is made in a ‘New World Style’ as some aspire to do, particularly in the South of France and Italy and parts of  Spain. It can mean that the history, sense of place, artisan wine making and vintage variation associated with ‘Old World Style’ traditional methods can also be applied to vineyards from beyond the borders of the Mediterranean.

In some ways this is justification rather than criticism for European  regions that apply ‘traditional’ rules strictly. You CAN see it as unnecessary restriction of wine making, stopping the more innovative wine makers from competing with those from other countries. However, you COULD also see it as a means of holding on to a style that differentiates the wines from all those in the rest of the world. Uniqueness sells … to a point.

The world has moved on. People, skills and techniques travel the world. I imagine Henry Higgins would struggle to replicate his neat parlour trick in today’s Covent Garden market, and the same is true of wine.

Old & New I think are still useful, but I think that they if they are used to describe styles rather than geographic boundaries, wine drinkers will find themselves opening the door to a whole new range of wines they might have otherwise dismissed.

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EWBC Petrol Art

It is too early to really be able to take it all in, but I am back from Lisbon and the European Wine Bloggers Conference (EWBC) 2009.

The conference this year was about 3 times the size of last year’s event, with around 120 bloggers and a great number of producers and other wine businesses there to support the event and promote their wines. That is a big change in a year, and makes me wonder about next year.

I have so many things in my head that writing one post seemed incredibly hard, so I thought I’d kick it off with a brief summary and a few notes of thanks to get the flow going, then over time I can post my thoughts on the sessions, the people, the location, the sponsors, the food, the practicalities of running a large conference and more. Wow, so many things to think about.

First, I need to restate my thanks to Ryan and Gabriella Opaz of Catavino. Although all three of us are listed as ‘organisers’ the load of all parts of the conference was not exactly evenly distributed and Gabriella in particular really does deserve an extra reward for making things happen as well as they did – just don’t hand her an open bottle of wine! (photo by eatlikeagirl)

Secondly, as with all conferences of this type, we struggled to keep everyone online so they could email, tweet, blog and generally record their impressions. The hotel network did not, unfortunately, seem up to the task as promised, but the boys from Adegga who are already experts in their own areas (check out their brilliant wine social site) also became our de-facto IT support setting up, monitoring and moving the network for 120 people. Thanks Andre, Andre and Emidio!

I must also mention all those who were at their second EWBC event. They too took on informal roles to support the team, welcoming new friends and encouraging the discussion, and I still think we managed to keep the tone very friendly despite growing the event so considerably. This is down entirely to the community-mindedness of all those involved. Thanks everyone!

So, briefly, what did I learn?

• I really enjoyed Portuguese wine and must buy more of it to learn the key regional differences
• Portuguese food is amazing and deserves a more relaxed enjoyment of it than I was able to devote
• The people of Portugal are very warm and generous. We were always well treated despite being so unusual and being so poor at speaking their language
• That cork is making great efforts and inroads, via people like Amorim, to gain our trust in it again as the best closure for quality wine (more on this very soon)
• That bloggers themselves are still a strong community with an inclination to help others and share, so we need to build on this while we can
• That differences between bloggers on certain issues that might seem important, such as monetisation, are vastly outweighed by what we have in common and we need more opportunities to meet face to face to remember this
• That one of the main barriers to more international cooperation is language differences, something that can be easily, if expensively, overcome, and that otherwise we would benefit a great deal from working together. So, how do we fix this? Certainly not by sticking to our local cliques
• That we still have not yet truly captured the essence of what the consumer is looking for regarding wine in social media, but we are getting closer
• That I have a weakness for 70’s & 80’s dancefloor classics and revivals

All of these deserve a post of their own, so hopefully I’ll be able to raise some of these issues in more detail soon

In summary, if you like writing about wine and you didn’t make it to Lisbon this year, pay close attention to this site and to the event site to grab a place for next year!

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