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An introduction to a series of short articles

The phrase “demotic rag” entered my head the other morning. I wasn’t fully aware. Caffeine has yet to trigger consciousness. Don’t ask why. I was thinking about democracy, I suppose, and my brain cells started fermenting. Or un-atrophying. It struck me as the kind of thing that TS Eliot might write. As it happens, I had conflated two words from wildly different quotations, albeit both from The Waste Land:

O O O that Shakespeherian rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent

From The Wasteland

And

Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel

And when I googled “demotic rag” to find its literary origin, it came up with “Do You Mean Demonic Rage” – which proves that the road to etymological hell is always paved with good intentions and ghost memories.

Anyway, in my googley meanderings, I did happen across one nice Eliot quote: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time,” which I decided to bury in an oubliette in my subconscious much as a squirrel squirrels away a hoard of nuts to sustain it through the winter months.

I would like to apply this slice of Eliot pithiness to wine appreciation. And leave the demotic rags on the side.

A lot of wine articles are written to prove a point. In a sense, they are advertising puffs. Very often a single swallow of wine betokens a succession of summers. The next big thing is ‘uge until the next bigger thing.

I can be strongly in favour of a group of wines and a wine culture without wearing a hair shirt and rolling my eyes and grabbing passers-by by the lapels to scream chapter and verse.

By the way, The Alternative Perspective. It has a ring to it? Like The Voice of Common Sense (uttered in a basso profundo tone). It sounds semi-quizzical, (if you put a question mark after it) as if the statement could be interpreted as self-doubting rather than assertive and tub-thumping. Is my perspective really alternative? Is this no more than dressing up a sheep in wolf’s clothing? Am I not doing what so many writers do and adopt a low-cal Devils-advocate contrarian position on matters to see them kites fly? Is it, in short, a colossal tease in an echo chamber?

I did write perspective rather than prospectus, mind, as I am not a fan of manifestoes and bullet-pointed, bullet-headed menus. This is because I am ideologically impure and chary of belief systems. When I have saddled up my natty wine hobbyhorse, largely accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative, I do lob in the occasional caveat to show that I don’t subscribe to one inalienable truth, nor am bunkered in one extreme position. I have conjunction-itis – i.e., no sentence is penned without a but in it. But seriously. I can consequently be strongly in favour of a group of wines and a wine culture without wearing a hair shirt and rolling my eyes and grabbing passers-by by the lapels to scream chapter and verse.

The Alternative Perspective will be one paragraph on one topic expressing a point of view that is not necessarily consonant with mainstream wine wisdom. It is not being contrarian for the sake of it.

Recently, I started a series of bloglets called Nuggetorials (good title, eh), to give me the freedom to go off-piste on certain wine topics. Sometimes there was a focus, more I was following a train of thought to see where I might serendipitously fetch up. They were as scoops of chunky monkey ice cream writing, studded with kernels of “homespun wisdom” (ironic non-italics). The alternative perspective will be even more nuggety than the nuggetorials. We aim to pith. If not pith people off.

I am getting nowhere. The Alternative Perspective will be one paragraph on one topic expressing a point of view that is not necessarily consonant with mainstream wine wisdom. It is not being contrarian for the sake of it (there’s enough of such keyboard terrorists pumping out that sort of stuff). The first blog will be soon, when I have rediscovered my inner demotic rags.