Frasier, the ultimate wine snob

'Prepared to be stomped like a late harvest gewurztraminer'.

I still haven’t caught the new series of Frasier which came out in October. I have actually heard some good things about it but was rather put off by the trailer. No, not that Rodney from Only Fools and Horses is there, it’s that Frasier himself is drinking beer! Fans of the original series will remember Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) and his brother Niles, played by David Hyde Pierce, sadly not in the new series, as two of the greatest wine lovers to ever appear on the small screen.

They play a pair of status-obsessed psychiatrists in Seattle, Frasier is on the radio while Niles is in private practice. It’s a spin off from Cheers, where Frasier was one of the regulars in the Boston bar. Unlike its great rival for king of the ‘90s and early ‘00s sitcom, Friends, which was almost completely dry, Frasier, the series was soaked in drink, and so apparently at times was Grammer. 

Frasier’s everyday drink marks him out as a bit unusual, sherry. The identity isn’t made clear because they pour it from a decanter. Sometimes it’s light like a fino, or darker like an amontillado. In one episode it’s described as an ‘Andalusian amontillado’ but in another a strangely familiar blue bottle appears. Could the ultimate wine snob really be a fan of Harvey’s Bristol Cream?

While the sherry might be anonymous, the series is full of more specific references to some splendid wines like a Vieux Certan 1975 or Le Montrachet Marquis de Laguiche 1985. Some of the funniest moments involve misidentification of bottles at their wine club. Niles says with glee in one episode: ‘I convinced some of my fellow psychiatrists to play a little prank on him. When he thought he was tasting the Chateau Petrus, he was in fact sipping a Forcas Dupre. You see, we'd switched the labels!’ In another Frasier says: ‘I had kind of a rough night at the wine club. During the blindfolded tasting, I gave four stars to a Mexican Zinfandel.’ 

The brothers’ competitive oenophilia reaches in apogee when they go head-to-head in a blind tasting at their wine club to become ‘master of the cork’ - there’s even a song that the other members sing to the victor: ‘hail cork master, the master of the cork, he knows which wine goes with fish or pork.’ Niles wins on a technicality. While the wine is important, so are the rules. As Frasier puts it, the club is  ‘just about wine and clear constitutional procedures for enjoying it.’ 

Watching Frasier now, what stands out is how formal they both are, Frasier in his sports jackets and Italian knits and Niles always in boxy double-breasted suits. They could really be in the 1950s, not the 21st century. Their restaurant of choice - Le Cigare Volante - is all white tablecloths and snooty French waiters. The name of the restaurant means The Flying Cigar, the French term for a UFO, and also the name of a wine made by Randall Grahm, who recently confirmed to me that the two a linked, a producer on Frasier was a fan of his wine. 

If you look at films from the ‘80s and earlier, this rarified Frenchness is what passed for upmarket in America, and indeed in Britain too. Think of the restaurant scene in The Blues Brothers or in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Both films were set in Chicago and feature Chez Paul (a real place) and Chez Quis (imaginary) respectively. Meanwhile top New York restaurants had names like Lutèce and Le Cirque.

Frasier seems to me to be the last gasp of how the American liberal elite used to behave, taking their wines and food from France, their music and clothes from Italy, and literature and theatre from England. Yes, the Crane boys are both terrific Anglophiles as well and over the years there were cameo appearances by top thesps like Derek Jacobi and Patrick Stewart. 

Nowadays the uniform of the elite looks more like Kendall Roy in Succession, all expensive hoodies, gilets and New Balance trainers - even the Senate in America has dropped its dress code. There’s an episode of Frasier called ‘The Great Crane Robbery’ where a tech billionaire, he’d be called a ‘tech bro’ now, buys Frasier’s radio station. He dresses in jeans and a hoodie but wants to ape Frasier’s look and taste - today it would be the other way round. Dressing formally is either a sign that you have to or you’re terribly out of date. Think of Robert Peston (son of Baron Peston) fuming in 2022 at not being allowed into a St. James’ club in his ‘comfortable mid-top trainers.’ I doubt the top restaurants in Seattle have a dress code anymore. 

The Bordeaux one-upmanship of the Crane brothers seems like a relic of another age. Anyone who thinks we’re now more relaxed about wine appreciation, however, should listen to wine enthusiasts today obsess over the right glasses - something that even Frasier didn’t do. And while nobody is going to snigger over your mispronunciation of Potensac when eating out, as happened to me once, you might well get a lecture on ethics from a sommelier with a pierced septum. In some ways we have just swapped one set of arcane rules and rituals for others that are even harder to follow - I wonder how the modern fetishisation of biodynamics and ‘natural’ wines will look in a few years. There is one area, however, where Frasier looks like quite the wine hipster - his love of sherry, though not served at room temperature out of tiny glasses please!

A slightly different version of this article appeared on Academie du Vin’s Vinosity blog.