The Wine Adventurer's blog
Francis Gimblett
24 February 2010 - I love the smell of celluloid in the morning.
Filmed the pilot intro to Wine Adventurer TV today. We set up on the edge of the Devil’s Punchbowl, a dramatic valley sweeping north from Hindhead. It was the setting for the author photo in the book. When we took the original shot, with the unspoilt swathe of dry scrub fading into the distance, punctuated by stunted patches of woodland and topped with a cobalt sky, it seemed redolent of warmer climes and would be in keeping with the theme of the book. But that was summer.
After my fifth attempt to do a piece to camera uninterrupted by army helicopters - no wonder there’s a shortage of Chinooks in Afghanistan, they’re all here over Hindhead - I questioned my wisdom at wanting to recreate the setting at all. My first take had started with a level of enthusiasm that became an effort to maintain as the moistened trouser bottoms of the now painfully inadequate light suit I’d worn for the original photo-shoot began to freeze to my ankles. David, my cameraman friend, reassured me that my shaking hands wouldn’t be noticed on screen but was concerned that I should not allow my nose to run, lest it freeze to my lip. I had lost all feeling in my toes, but consoled myself that my heightened heart rate each time the crump of artillery jolted me from my script might help the blood permeate the benumbed digits and ward off frostbite. Between sorties I managed to grind out what I want to say and, calling a wrap, we quickly retreated to an editing suite, where the healing proerties of a medicinal glass of red wine was on hand.
Looking at the footage, I think we may have pulled it off, but, having watched a documentary this week on the search for Osama Bin Laden, I wonder if the British military is now focussing its efforts in the Surrey Hills.
11 February 2010 - Is there any way back to the future?
My name is Francis Gimblett and the year must be 1977. I’m alone, confused and wondering what comes next. Unlike in Life on Mars, it’s not a road accident that’s teleported me back to the days of Abigail’s Party, where sugary Liebfraumilch was the wine of choice and little else was on the shelves, it’s our homogenised wine trade that’s responsible.
Due largely to loss-leading practices adopted by the major supermarkets, Thresher, the last of the major high street wine chains, folded in November. Its demise follows that of many minor wine retailers in recent years. The reason? When people are faced with a choice where price is the only difference they understand, the cheapest choice always wins.
We have many hours of TV per week telling us how to have food that tastes better, and there are now probably more TV chefs than newscasters, all doing a great job in stimulating our interest in, and awareness of, the taste of our food. However, wine pundits tend to be distant, elevated individuals, largely unintelligible to most mortals, and consigned to the inside pages of the weekend press or specialist magazines.
What, then, has transpired as a result of this inability to engage in the same way as the Jamies, Delias, Steins, and Fearnly-Whittingstalls? Wine has morphed to suit only those selling it, resulting in us having the wine equivalent of a choice between turkey twizzlers and sugary bread on the shelves of most major retailers.
I believe that many of the wines sold in the UK are now overly alcoholic and have unnecessarily high sugar levels. Moreover, in my view, these factors are there to make up for a lack of flavour and complexity in much of the mass market wine that is required to sell in large volumes. The very high grape yields that are needed to produce such high volume wines (e.g. own brands, special offers, and heavily discounted lines) inevitably tend to lead to less aroma and flavour in the grapes. This deficiency often has to be compensated for with flavour enhancers like sugar.
In our mouths, sugar is an ingredient that stimulates those taste buds that tell us something is good to eat or drink; in wine, its predominance can be masked by other components such as added acidity or tannin, so the wine can still taste dry. Alcohol performs a similar role, as well as making us intoxicated, which in turn can encourage us to drink a higher volume.
There are many smaller wine producers making decent, interesting wines without having to resort to these practices, and they are often similarly priced. So you don’t have to spend more to get more, you just need to go to outlets that are able to buy from such producers in the smaller quantities they can offer. However, such outlets are rapidly diminishing, and the smaller producers are being forced to seek more enlightened markets elsewhere; so finding them is becoming harder.
This isn’t to say that all high volume wine is bad, or that all large outlets sell only these sorts of wines, so I’ve decided that my way back to the future is to embark on an adventurer’s open-minded journey around the most often encountered wines, in order to discover what to drink and, just as importantly, what not to drink.
Look out for Wine Adventurer TV, coming in the not so distant future via YouTube.
