(Manfred Klimek / pic: Weingut Emil Bauer)
The Wine and the Choice of Words (WamS, August 2011)
I can’t stand hearing it any more. And it has been annoying me for years. People are constantly telling me that this evening, over dinner or while relaxing, they are going to “drink a nice glass of wine”. Or—even more daringly—a whole bottle of nice wine. So much beauty is almost unbearable; it takes my breath away every time. I would most like to grab the person by the throat. Nice wine? What nonsense!
Do people drink nice wine in France? No! In Italy? Rarely. In Austria? Obviously hardly ever. So why do Germans constantly drink nice wine? Is their life so grey? What is the opposite of nice wine called, anyway? Ugly wine?
Germans drink “nice wine” because wine is not part of their everyday culture. Wine is a reward, something special to be enjoyed and celebrated in an upscale setting. And so it has to be a nice wine. This is how they convince themselves that the plonk from the discount supermarket is interesting. Three euros and ninety cents. But a nice wine. Absurd.
There are few countries with sillier terms and categories for wine than Germany. There is, for example, “terrace wine”. It is supposed to be as young and unobtrusive as possible, but fruity and lively, so that you can drink it on the balcony in summer. But I like drinking a Meursault or a similarly full-bodied Burgundy on my balcony. With grilled meat, too. It is better than the characterless terrace wines that can only be sold because consumers are told they have to follow the rule of drinking a certain kind of characterless wine outdoors and in sunshine.
Or “fireside wine”—another idiotic classification. Fireside wine means full-bodied red wines that you do not drink with a meal, but are supposed to consume according to the rules in front of a blazing fire or in a similarly relaxed atmosphere, like a kind of medicine. A wine like this has to breathe for several hours beforehand, before it is then drunk lukewarm. Then the wine experts nod: Yes, yes, a real fireside wine. How expressive.
Another such absurdity is “everyday wine”. Entire communities of wine enthusiasts search desperately through blogs and internet forums for this all-purpose wonder. Everyday wine is usually red and is supposed to taste like a good Bordeaux, but cost only a tenth as much. And it is not supposed to give you a headache either. In other words, a wine that tastes like something more, but spares your wallet if you want to drink it every day. Yet most Germans do not drink wine every day at home. And so the crates of everyday wines are emptied within 12 months. Not within 12 days.
Why can’t it simply be a good wine? Why does this wine-related twaddle still have such currency? And why does Germany need so-called wine punks—wild types, mostly with tattoos, leather clothes and a hard stare—who make wine drinking palatable to their own and a younger generation, as though it were a mission of world-historical importance? Nevertheless, I’ll make a stand: Personally, I prefer these unhinged wine punks to the muddled wine writers who saddled us with terrace wine and fireside wine. Because the wine punks want to normalise the way we deal with wine; they want to bring wine into the everyday and the uncomplicated. For reasons of conspicuousness and lived unconventionality, they need the edgy image for this, because the twaddle surrounding wine is still the preserve of an ultimately philistine and mind-numbingly boring bourgeoisie.
Why can’t people in Germany simply drink wine? As they do in Italy. Without thinking too much about it. Why try to build an aura of honesty around cheap wines? And suspicion of fraud around expensive wines? And why must a wine recommendation always appear in a wine column? Very well, here is one. I recommend an everyday wine, a Bordeaux that costs little and can always be drunk: the 2009 Chateau du Retout. It tastes good slightly chilled on the terrace, too. And in front of the fire. And even with a safety pin pierced through your cheek. That should be description enough.