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Once upon a time I only had to open my mouth or take to my keyboard to ruffle feathers– I had Larry David’s effortless knack for causing offence.

Asked to write the occasional article for trade magazines, my moment of glory eventually arrived when I was given a brief to investigate and comment upon wine mark-ups in restaurants. I spent a week or two comparing prices on dozens of wine lists, tabulated my findings, e-mailed the article to the magazine… and thought no more about it.

Cue hysterica passio. When the piece was eventually published, the reaction was extraordinary. The story was taken up by The Times (front page and third editorial), The Daily Mail, local and national radio stations and even press organisations in other countries. That the very same wine, purchased for the same cost price, might be sold for £20 in one restaurant and £80 in another, (as was the case with certain brands), was a wine trade gotcha. Consumers were the victims and the examples of rank malpractice cited justified a degree of outrage. And this article was no mere opinion piece (the odd pithy aside about rip-off wine culture in the article apart) but bald facts backed by specific evidence.

I wasn’t so much blaming the restaurants as the bean-counter mentality and the short-term fixation with gross profit margin at the expense of value. It seems ridiculous that sommeliers and wine buyers are pressed to focus more on their margins than the quality and provenance of what is in the bottle. When it comes to expensive/luxury wines and the application of the same rigorous mark-up policies the profit margin becomes even more inflated. And unfair. Wine is treated as a cross between a commodity and a means of making customers part with more of their money.

This was the chestnut that kept on giving, as it were.

Some of the wine buyers in the restaurants cited in the article were embarrassed at the revelations. Others were defensive, blustering about the special wine service or unique glassware that surely justified their swingeing mark-ups.

Like the novelist who writes her masterpiece on the first attempt, I had scooped my most resonant controversy on my “journalistic debut.”

I began writing newsletters about fifteen years ago, taking pointy editorial positions on – and occasionally inveighing against – homogeneity, boring wine lists, wine consultants (a.k.a. the somnolent gatekeepers). Every so often, I reheated the gross profit margin chestnut for good measure. I wasn’t just being ornery for the sake of it; quizzical and sceptical, perhaps.

There was plenty to critique in the wine trade. When I started, I met some pretty snobbish people who seemed to believe that there were eternal verities and the wine world revolved around what they determined was good, better, best. After that came reverse snobbery, the idea that cheap wine was good because it was simply cheap and not that bad, which led to ever dumbing down to meet the lowest common denominator of taste (Remember Superplonk?). Even the wines suffered from pretentiousness. Wineries wanted medals, awards, points – oenologists were entreated to make powerful, unctuous, buttery or extracted wines to flatter the palates of opinion-formers and judges.

More recently, I have had a pop at the whole redundant idea of appellation. Whilst appellation may have been set up with the best of intentions, it became – in certain places – bureaucratic, and at times arrogantly inflexible. Various of our growers have fallen foul of a system that claims to uphold standards and defend wine heritage yet turns out to be the standard bearer for vested interests and the driver of conformity. Appellation, if it is to have any value, must change and change inevitably puts noses out of joint.

Natural Wine Controversies

In 2008 we opened Terroirs and natural wine began to be a thing. Terroirs was really just a wine bar with a relaxed atmosphere where you could go and drink the artisan wines that you wouldn’t find elsewhere. It wasn’t marketed at the time as a natural wine bar, but because of the nature of the wines on the list, that’s what it was.

The rest, as they say, is history. After a bonny start where the wine trade en masse looked favourably on Terroirs and our endeavours, natural wine became a divisive issue associated with manifestos and political posturing. The two words “natural” and “wine”, when juxtaposed, became freighted with meaning and intent, and like a line from one of the testaments, could be (and were) interpreted in so many different ways by different people with different agendas. Various wine journalists and commentators assumed a nakedly hostile stance, presenting our company (and us as individuals) as no-sulphur evangelists wanting to flood the country with our nasty zero-additive natural wines, as if we were entirely careless about quality, and valued pure style over substance. Others viewed the word “natural” as a semantic threat in itself, stating that wine could never be a natural product (precisely because it was a manmade product) and, in any case, such wines were faulty and rubbish. Which is having your semantic cake and eating it.

For several years, the wine trade scene roiled with grandstanding contrariness – straw man fallacies, false dichotomies and more than a fair few ad hominem attacks. Ayatollah, fundamentalist, extremist and Cathar Prefect were some of the terms used to describe me back in the day. The Old Testament day, I guess. I used to joke that certain sensitive souls had google alerts set to respond to the juxtaposition of the words natural and wine. Mighty carillons chimed. Thus, did natural wine cause uncontrolled “wild fermentation” ‘mongst certain overly sensitive-souled bloggers. Meanwhile, a notable wine merchant most notably wrote an introduction to their wine catalogue excoriating natural wines and the natural wine phenomenon, whereas another, a director of one of the largest wine companies, and a guest speaker at the first Real Wine Fair, commented that he felt like Daniel in the lion’s den. Yes, natural wine had created a Manichean universe!

The net effect of all this disingenuous huffing and puffing was to make natural wine an issue that everyone in the trade and beyond had to have an opinion on, thereby kindling the embers that were warming this particular hot potato. If I wished to provoke further controversy, then I simply countered illogical statements. Opinions derived from generalisations rather than a deeper knowledge of the subject would, by definition, never be changed. A little learning closes all portals to open minds.

Not that any of this mattered. Farmers and vignerons continued to do their own thing, merchants imported the wines, wine bars, restaurants and retailers sold them, and hundreds of thousands of people drank and enjoyed them. And social media made a gradual irrelevance of the views of the commentariat. The part of the wine world that espouses hierarchical systems of quality, that judges this wine to be better or worthy to be more expensive than that wine, that embraces market forces, is not the wine world that we inhabit.

Artisan wine fairs helped to solidify the position of the wines. Bringing the growers and the wines to the people. Seeing hundreds of growers in one venue, making interesting, exciting and original wines, in a friendly democratic (trade and consumers) environment, had the effect of making the wines more real.

Controversy inevitably arises, admittedly, when you attempt to proselytise or browbeat, rather than allow individuals to make up their minds. That is why we always venerate drinkability and say that the best bottle on the table is the empty bottle (as long as that bottle wasn’t emptied down the sink!). We are always drinking a glass of wine rather than an idea, but the wines we find most delicious and nourishing are those that have been touched least and taste most natural. I don’t think we have ever said that this wine is better than that one. It would be a meaningless assertion, and comparing chalk with cheese.

As the first merchant to import natural wines and to make a gentle virtue of it, we were bound to cop some criticism. If natural wines had been horrible or even just reviled by sommeliers and wine buyers, there wouldn’t have been an issue, but the wines were real, the enthusiasm was genuine and attitudes were definitely being changed. Those who resisted most were the trade folk who felt left behind, and believed that the wines they espoused were being painted as conventional and conservative. The criticism derived from a sense of insecurity, the fear of not being part of a bandwagon, in some cases a raging against a perceived dying of the light.

The wine trade is more diverse than it has ever been and the gulf has widened between the small specialist companies and the huge brand-driven, turnover-driven corporate entities. Naturally, there is room for both, although as recent restaurant closures have shown, bigger is definitely not better. With this division and the fact that there are different wine worlds (so to speak), it is very difficult now to write about bad practice and to provoke controversies. Natural wine is well-established, the battle is over – if it ever was a battle. Mark-ups on wines may continue to be scandalous, of course, but then the rents and rates that restaurants have to pay are scandalous too, and so we are not surprised when we see a 2-euro wine for £25 + on a restaurant list. The UK duty system is institutionally regressive and punitive, but then we all think that. On the plus side, a new generation of (open-minded) wine buyers are putting together more interesting lists (in terms of content) and wine service is definitely more communicative and informed. And with social media the customers have also become the opinion-formers.

Most wine magazines and the nationals steer well clear of anything controversial. The advertisers (big brands or associations) are paying their wages, so they are highly unlikely to rock the boat. These magazines are not the forums to challenge the status quo or even challenge wine consumers to think. That has to be the prerogative of the independent blogger.

Many controversies are disagreements about approaches to farming and winemaking. There are a thousand decisions to make when you are a farmer or winemaker, qualitative and quantitative, whether you follow a strict recipe or work more intuitively.  If winemakers feel comfortable inoculating ferments or adding substances to stabilise their product, we are not bound to confront them. We do challenge people on their practices and ask them why they adopt the approaches that they do.

So, what will get the wine chattering classes chattering again? Climate crisis is making people reflect more deeply on their food and wine choices and their lifestyles in general. What can the wine world do to help?

A Modest Proposal

Perhaps, we should stop insisting that wine should be a cheap product. It does not have to be a luxury commodity, but it should be sustainably produced and that will necessarily add to the cost. Proper organic practices should be mandatory, so that we are always putting back into the earth everything that we take out (by tree-planting, encouraging plant life and biodiversity, by recycling, going green in the winery…) and farming for the environment and for future generations.

We can also start conducting our business in an ethical way and observing the golden rule. This involves adhering to the principles of fair trade and ensuring that everyone in the supply chain is properly rewarded for their efforts.

Finally, we should stop trying to perpetuate the idea of wine as an industry. There are hundreds of big expos, tastings and conferences around the world. We can’t stop people from travelling, but we need to rein back the tens and thousands of unnecessary airplane journeys (for example). The wine world has become a thoroughly bloated multi-billion-dollar monster, far removed from its simple origins of farmers growing grapes and making delicious wine for the table. Perhaps, this final “unspoken” controversy, that of the ridiculous amounts of money washing around the wine industry, is the greatest, in that it is not rooted in the wine industry per se, but is a symptom of capitalism in general, and of businesses modelled on aggressive growth.

Growth at all cost – at any cost – is no longer sustainable. And although it seems a far cry from whether restaurants mark up their wines by three, four or five times, it really stems from the same narrow commercial view of the world – that profit is the sole driver of success. That needs to change.

Growth at all cost – at any cost – is no longer sustainable. And although it seems a far cry from whether restaurants mark up their wines by three, four or five times, it really stems from the same narrow commercial view of the world – that profit is the sole driver of success. That needs to change.

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