I’m not sure who invented the term ‘fine wine’, but they were probably rather pleased with themselves. It is after all pleasingly alliterative – a catchy shorthand designed, you might feel, cynically, to get you to up your spend.
Unfortunately, it may also throw up images in your minds of pin-striped City slickers who drink nothing but Bordeaux and would look down on you if you confused your vintages or pronounced the château wrong (or, my pet peeve, those who play ‘Wine Options’, serving it blind to put you on the spot).
So, how do we wine lovers get round this? First of all: dress code. Not all people who splash the cash on wine are City boys. Rock stars and film stars drink fine wine, sometimes like Sam Neill and Brad Pitt going on to make it themselves. These days, wine buffs are just as likely to wear jeans and leathers as red corduroys. Or a skirt. Not all wine aficionados are male.
What should we call fine wine?
What should we call it instead? Serious wine, special wine, thrilling wine? I rather like the latter because great wine IS thrilling and all you need to come round to it is a eureka moment where you taste something that makes you think, so THAT’S what the fuss is about.
For me, as I suspect for a lot of you, Burgundy has been the gateway – the seductive, sexy creaminess of an aged white Burgundy (especially with scallops). The first time I tasted Coche-Dury (way out of my price league now, sadly), dipping my nose into a glass of young Echezeaux and feeling as if I’d plunged into a bath filled with crushed raspberries, but as my talented young successor at The Guardian, Hannah Crosbie, points out, fine wine doesn’t have to be French.
I’ve had equally memorable experiences sipping Ridge’s memorable zinfandels (OK, it helped to be talked through them by one of my heroes in wine, Paul Draper), wandering through the cobweb-festooned cellars of Chateau Musar and scratching my white Burgundy itch with Michael Brajkovich of Kumeu River in New Zealand, whose top wines you’ll fall for big time if you’re a Meursault fan.
The best grapes, the best vineyards
Yes, these bottles are expensive, but that expense is generally justified. Fine wine – OK, let’s call it that so we all know what we’re talking about – is generally made from the best grapes from the best vineyards, aged in the best barrels and given the time to develop finesse and complexity. You can drink perfectly well for under £10, especially at The Wine Society of which I am both a fan and a long-term member, and I do, but just as it’s a pleasure to go to a Michelin-starred restaurant from time to time, it’s a treat to drink a great bottle. One that makes you think rather than just drink.
As I’m sure you know, the more you spend on a bottle, too, the more goes on the actual liquid inside it and the less, proportionately, on tax and duty. There’s also the massive plus that unlike in restaurants, you are not paying for the mark-up or service on the marked-up price. If you regard £25, say, is a lot to spend on a bottle, think how pleased you would be to find a wine for £25 on a wine list these days. And if you’re drinking less, as many of us are trying to do, why not drink better when you do?
Sip, don’t swig!
You can also choose exactly what to eat with your bottle with the benefit that you can make something to show it off, and that everyone who’s sharing it will be eating the same rather than choosing food that might detract from it. For a special occasion, there’s nothing better than building the meal around a couple of great bottles that everyone recognises are precious to or memorable for you – or for the person for whom you’re throwing the party. That said, I do like drinking fine wine with just one other – and preferably someone who will appreciate it. A sipper rather than a swigger!
>> Try out The Wine Society’s Food and Wine Matcher
Apart from cost, what other stumbling blocks are you erecting against buying more expensive wine? Do you feel you don’t know enough to make an informed decision about what to buy? You can do your homework first, but The Wine Society helpfully has fine wine advisers to hand – real, live people not bots – with whom you can discuss your budget and your preferences.
Risk-free exploration
Plus, if you really don’t like the wine you’ve bought – or you feel it’s not showing as it should – there’s a no-quibble guarantee called The Society’s Promise which means they’ll offer you a credit, a replacement or a refund. Sounds absolutely nuts to me, but I guess Wine Society members are decent folk who don’t take advantage. Anyway, it makes buying even wine you intend to keep for the longer term risk free.
Maybe your main concern is that you haven’t got enough room or the ideal conditions in which to store those special bottles you’ve bought. Living in a flat, I haven’t either, but did you know – I must confess I didn’t – there was something called Members' Reserves which is basically a vast storage space at their Stevenage headquarters. And it’s some of the cheapest wine storage space around. Well, Jancis Robinson MW, no less, says so!
It might seem perverse in these hard times to recommend you spend more on a bottle rather than less, but if you end up paying no more than you were previously spending and drinking better, that’s a win on all fronts: health, bank balance, sheer pleasure and enjoyment.
Let’s hear it for fine wine!
