French are clueless about buying wine

THE average French shopper takes one minute and 26 seconds to choose a bottle of wine from a supermarket shelf. Is this ability to take swift decisions about wine an example of French savoir-vivre? No, it isn’t. The average French supermarket shopper knows nothing about wine and feels lost in the wine aisle. Why do shoppers learn nothing about wine when supermarkets stock about 1,200 different bottles to choose from? Shoppers keep buying such forgettable wines because nothing is learned from drinking them. Choosing wine by the marketing mix (price, packaging, promotion) is no substitute for using wine knowledge to inform choices.

Full article first published in The Connexion (May, 2013)

Gold medals have lost their glitter

HOW can a gold medal-winning wine from one competition end up without any award in another competition? Astonishingly, the likelihood of receiving a gold medal in a wine competition can be statistically explained by chance alone. A wine’s performance in one competition is also not correlated with its performance in another, say researchers. Wine judges' inconsistency and lack of peer concordance devalue medals. However, competitions are a 'win/no lose' proposition for winemakers because nobody comments on wines that do not win. Consumers appropriately remain unimpressed by the medals tombola.

Full article first published in The Connexion (April, 2013)

Sniffing out the buffs from bluffers

IS the wine expert's “cigars, truffles and boysenberries” just a dazzling party trick? Do such words convey anything useful about a wine's flavour? The ability to match tasting notes with wines appears to be random, even among experienced drinkers, even when consutling their own notes! What is going on when someone descants about "rose petals on the nose" or even "violent tits"? Wine words say more about the price of a wine than its flavour. "Cigar" sounds expensive; "fruity" sounds cheap. Beyond showing appreciation, wInespeak is also a sign of logorrhoea, say experts. Ultimately, Bordeaux tastes more like Bordeaux than "truffles".

Full article first published in The Connexion (March, 2013)

It's always the season for spicy vin chaud

AMONG the misguided traditions that can limit your enjoyment of wine, few are more absurd than the tradition of drinking mulled wine at Christmas markets only. Mulled wine is easy to make and personalise with your own secret ingredient to complement the usual cinnamon, star anise, nutmeg, vanilla and cloves. The Nordic version glögg contains vodka or aquavit. In Germany, glühwien (literally “glow wine”, from the hot irons used for mulling) is sometimes laced with rum. Keith Floyd was a fan. He laced his version with illegal poitin, aka “Irish moonshine”. Vin chaud is a mid-winter treat not to be reserved for Christmas markets only. 

Full article first published in The Connexion (February, 2013)