Pungent

It is a running joke amongst my friends that I don't drink New World wine. It's not true, I don't discriminate against any wine simply due to its origin. However, like anyone else, I have acquired my own taste in wine, which has come largely from being given various French wines to drink by my family throughout my formative years. This means that the big bold jammy flavours that dominate much New World wine don't really chime with my palette. Some people genuinely like this kind of wine, perhaps many people, but I suspect that much like I have with (most) French wine, many people have learned to like this style of wine. Wine being wine though, or at least a lot of the nonsense that floats around wine being what it is, many people probably think that this kind of taste defines 'good' wine. This is obviously horse shit: whilst there is good and bad wine, much of it is just wine you like or wine you don't like. I don't particularly like big brash wine, but that doesn't mean I don't think other people shouldn't drink it if that's what they like. However I'd equally like to carry on enjoying the wine that I like, which is why I worry when I hear about French wine makers making wines in the 'new world' style. I even heard about a wine maker in Burgundy taking a load of their wine, sticking it in new oak barrels and doing all sorts of other things to give it that New World style. In Burgundy: the second most famous wine producing region in France. 

I'm sure the last sentence could easily be interpreted as snobbery (as I'm sure it will if any of my friends are reading this!) but it is actually a concern about diversity: if even the French start making wine in a New World style, who is going to make Old World style wine? The interesting thing about wine (and unfortunately much of what has traditionally helped the snobs scare others off) is its massive diversity and variation: for the inquisitive there is always something new to discover, even if you might not like all of it (and no one does). If everyone starts making the same kind of wine, that diversity goes away and wine just becomes another way of getting drunk. The success especially of cheaper Australian wine has been all about delivering a consistent product, i.e. one that will always taste exactly the same and can be produced in large batches. This is the same approach that was applied to lager in Britain in the 1970s, which resulted in a very consistent product but with a very small amount of flavour. Of course no one can accuse Australian wine of lacking flavour, but I can't help feeling that here too quantity may be a substitute for quality. 

Having lots of flavour as signifier for quality is a modern phenomenon that can be observed across all forms of drink that one can be snooty about: coffee, wine and beer all now have their big flavour aficionados. Look at the craft beer craze: to all intents and purposes it is a good thing, popularising the small brewery and brining different kinds of beers to the market, except that almost all of the beer is American-style IPA made with very strong imported hops. Certainly these days it seems as if, in London at least, you can go into a pub claiming to sell real ale and you might struggle to get a classic bitter, mild or traditional IPA. It seems churlish to complain when there are more different beers around now than there have been for many a year, but when that difference can only really be defined by subtle variations in the volume at which they shout "HERE, HAVE SOME MORE HOPS," you have to ask how much actual variety there is. Clearly very hoppy beer is an acquired taste - just like very fruity wine or very fruity coffee - I'm just not sure why I should acquire it. There are many other tastes out there that I have acquired that I'm perfectly happy with, as well as (I hope) still more that I have yet to acquire and look forward to acquiring. I object to the inference that I lack taste simply because I'm not that keen on certain very strong flavours. To me this trend towards making every taste bigger is merely an attempt to codify taste along the same lines as American fast food companies codify value: bigger is always better. It requires no independent thought or personal valuation, because the decision has been made simple for you: bad food has no flavour, so good food must have lots of flavour and the best food must have the most. 

Again I am sounding like I think all of the new food and drink movements are a bad thing, and I absolutely don't. I just think that like every other potential cultural niche, 'artisan' food and drink can no longer be of any interest to anyone for any period of time before it is instantly codified, commodified and commercialised. The various food fads that have swept through London in the last few years like forest fires, their flames fanned by the wind of blogger, social media and general Internet hype - dirty burgers, barbecue and ramen to name but a few -  are testament to the fact that barely two restaurants can constitute a movement in the scramble for the new in food just as much as two vaguely similar bands used to constitute a new form of music in the pre-Britpop NME. We have arrived at a world where enough of us are keen to taste the next exciting, exclusive, underground thing that the definitions of luxury and exclusivity have to be broadened to fit us all in, and in broadening they have to appeal to a wider audience and to appeal to a wider audience they have to shout louder, and in shouting louder, they have become much less subtle or nuanced. Perhaps this is simply the inevitable result of an ever growing global middle class: that even things that are not mass produced fall foul of the homogenising forces of mass opinion. I hope not. I hope that just because my tastes are counter to the prevailing trend, that doesn't mean that they are to be drowned out entirely by the noise of ever louder flavour.