Life's too short not to drink bad wine

Sometimes the best times are had with cheap booze.

This is something of a companion piece to the article on The Sportsman restaurant I posted a few weeks ago. I wrote this a couple of years back just after the last Covid lockdown so parts of it will seem a bit dated but overall I think it holds up.

Life’s too short to drink bad wine - few wine writers, educators or communicators can have resisted spouting those words at one time or another. Apparently Goethe came up with the saying, though that might be as accurate as all those quotes attributed to Orwell that people use to win arguments on Twitter. I associate it most with the late English political writer Simon Hoggart who for many years wrote a wine column in the Spectator (not the Wine Spectator) and published a book called, yes you guessed it, “Life’s too short to drink bad wine.”

During the various lockdowns and restrictions that most of us have been subjected to since last year, those words took on a special resonance for me. I was fortunate enough to have a steady income from writing about drinks and because we weren’t going out or going on holiday, for the first time in years I had a bit of excess money. I bought a lot of wine. During those long unchanging months, meal times assumed a totemic importance. We cooked lavish dishes and I would spend ages thinking about the right wine to go with the food. In the middle of a global health crisis, it seemed silly to drink anything less than very good wine. Why not open that bottle of Echezeaux I’d been saving? After all, life’s too short not to drink very good wine.

Unlike some, I was lucky to have my wife and daughters with me but after yet another daube de boeuf eaten with a nice bottle of Gigondas, I found myself longing for the kind of mundane occasions that I might have passed up in the before times: a neighbour’s barbecue, an old friend’s book launch or a work drinks party. And what do all these things have in common? Bad or at least boring wine.

Some of the best times in my life have been spent drinking bad wine: gossipy publishing parties I spent my life at in the 00s fueled by cheap white wine sometimes out of plastic cups, bottles of Jacob’s Creek with pretentious late night discussions while listening to Leonard Cohen at university, or holidays in southern Europe drinking the thin acidic wine that was cheaper than mineral water. The day I first met the woman who would become my wife in Sicily, we were drinking bad wine, though the food was wonderful.

‘Petrol pump’ wine on sale in Italy (image from Reddit)

In contrast, some of the least fun experiences of my life have been spent in smart restaurants passing the wine list round to fellow wine bores hoping to order something wonderful but as often as not paying too much for something disappointing. Meanwhile non wine-obsessed diners at the table just want something to drink. Sometimes life’s too short to obsess over wine. Think what you might be missing while your nose is buried in the wine list?

For most people, wine quality isn’t that important. It’s fuel for conversation. I’ve learned from bitter experience not to try to force people to appreciate wine, just pour something palatable and if anyone goes ‘mmmm’, then that’s a bonus. When I meet new people, I try not to talk too much about my job as a drinks writer because having a reputation as a ‘wine snob’ can really put a crimp in your social life. Quite often I’ve had to reassure my host that I will in fact drink anything. I fear is that I might come across like a relative of mine who, when I offer him a glass of wine, asks me what it is and if he doesn’t like the sound of it, won’t have some or will ask me to open something else. I’ve even known him to send a wine back because he didn’t like it. In someone’s house. Who does this? 

You’re missing out if you insist on only drinking the good stuff. At some of the most important events of our lives like weddings, christenings and funerals there will be bad or at least indifferent wine. But more than this, bad wine actually has a symbolic value from the communion wine in Christianity to the mevushal wine in Judaism - a wine that was deliberately made to taste unpleasant to discourage non-believers from drinking it. The point is not that it’s good, it’s that everyone is partaking. I can imagine some of the wine enthusiasts I know taking a sip of the wine at the wedding at Cana, and sending it back as “it’s a bit watery.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love really good wine, I can’t wait until that case of 2016 Barbaresco in cellar (it’s really a cupboard) is ready to drink. There’s a time and place to appreciate it, ideally with like-minded people, or better still on your own. But on some occasions, you just have to forget about the quality of the wine, knock back the sickly sweet prosecco, sip the warm Barefoot Merlot, smile and raise a silent toast to life. Sometimes life’s too short not to drink bad wine.