IWS in questi giorni sta programmando la pubblicazione di "Storia triste del vino"  di Jacopo Manni quando dice e scrive sulla "storia triste del vino che voleva essere qualcosa di più". Una storia e un lamento che contiamo di pubblicare integralmente per dare il massimo spazio alle sue considerazioni e all'analisi cui giunge. 

Abbiamo sbagliato tutti scrive Manni. Abbiamo sbagliato nel voler nobilitare qualcosa che era già nobile, nel voler giustificare qualcosa che non aveva bisogno di giustificazioni. Il vino non doveva solamente elevars....-

E nella redazione di IWS siamo con Jacopo Manni quando il vino è troppo in alto, e da lì, semplicemente, non vede più nessuno. .Doveva restare anche in basso, mischiarsi, contaminarsi, perdersi. Doveva continuare a essere imperfetto e accessibile. Adesso....

"Così è oggi il vino. Non lo beviamo più perché ci piace, ma perché altri lo raccontano meglio di quanto noi potremmo mai fare. E questo, mi dispiace dirlo, non è vino. È il simulacro del vino. È un’ombra ben vestita" che racconta qualcosa di noi”

From welt known analist and brand creator, also known as Devil's Advocate,  I have received following message that is gladly published by IWS. In fact we have programmed its publication.

This makes it sound like a precious substance with something of the power of a holy icon hanging on the wall.

 Image: Midjourney AIDevil's Advocate 

Robert Joseph   Wine brand creator, Consultant, Industry Analyst

As someone who looks to social media for grist to put in my analytical mill, I’ve noticed a growing number of beautifully written hymns of praise to the good old days when people associated wine with the men and women and vineyard that produced it rather than an industrial winery.When our ancestors drank it, to quote one recent writer, “it helped… mark transitions, carry memory, create rhythm, and connect. It has been sacred and social, ceremonial and political… people used wine to give weight to moments.

This makes it sound like a precious substance with something of the power of a holy icon hanging on the wall.

 

And, yes, of course, wine had a role in the mass and on a few special moments of the year, but let’s remove the pink-lensed specs and focus on the facts.As recently as the 1960s, the French drank 120 litres of wine per person per year. A similar figure to the 150 litres that Americans drink of Coca Cola and other soft drinks today. It was given to school kids every day with their lunch - until 1958, when a law was passed to ban its provision to children younger than 14 years old. Even today, per capita wine consumption in France is based on citizens aged 15 and older.Those soft drinks favoured in the US come in various formats, but principally cans and big PET bottles. Most of the wine 60 years ago came in returnable 1-litre bottles with brands like Kiravi, Valpierre, Margnat and Préfontaines. These had a reserved place on the dining table, along with the salt and pepper. And probably received no more attention than those condiments - whatever this 1962 advertisement might have pretended

 

 

Kiravi, one of the popular brands of the 1950s and 1960sToday, almost nobody knows or cares how or where Coke and Sprite are made, and few French paid much attention to the origin of the wine they were drinking. In the early part of the 20th century, it was probably Algerian, shipped in old casks to the Quai de Bercy in Paris.In the supermarkets where I shopped in Beaune the late

1970s, it was priced according to its ABV: more alcohol cost more centimes. Bottles labeled at 10,5% were very popular. And very unpleasant.

 

 

Image © Ministère de la Culture - Médiathèque de l'architecture et du patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / René-JacquesIn earlier times, as Rod Philips reveals in his excellent book, French Wine, the poor had as much access to decent wine as they had to decent healthcare and dentistry. Even in the regions where wine was produced, most of the peasants who toiled in the vineyards often had to make do with low-strength piquette made by refermenting the juices and skins with water and a little honey or sugar, after the real wine had been shipped off to the kinds of people who owned the land on which they worked.When thinking about wine in those days, almost nobody would have imagined a bottle with a label and a cork.Most wine went straight from fermenting vat, to cask, to jug to tankard, mug or tumbler or, in Scotland, a 2-litre pewter tappit hen with a lid, like this.

 

Image from the National Museum of Scotland

 

If you were lucky, the Algerian wine, however vinegary, would have been honestly made. It was commonly said of Valpierre, however, that it was made by adding water and yeast in Marseilles to 'grape powder' imported from the French territory of the Côte d'Ivoire. Other examples may have been even more questionable. If a wine passed through the hands of the négociants of the Languedoc town of Sète, it might have been 'tricked up' in ways few modern critics of 'ultra-processed' wine could even imagine.No labelsBottles were for posh people’s butlers to use as decanters (the wealthy bought wine by the barrel too) or for the wines of a very few estates. And even then, only since the 17th century. Labels (and I speak as someone who once wrote a book about them) are a recent concept, dating back only as far as the 18th century.

Art of the Wine Label - available from some good second-hand bookshops. Occasionally.People drank wine, with or without food, at a wide range of times of day. Whether they drank as much at breakfast as the 12% consumption of Coca Cola recorded in the US some years ago, I don’t know. But this Taste magazine article is well worth reading.

 

Coke with your hash brownsIn any case, I’ve certainly passed ageing Italian men with their tumblers of rough red as I’ve queued for coffee on my way to the Vinitaly trade fair in Verona at 9am.Whatever the vessel from which it was finally drunk, for most people, most of the time, wine was imbibed with as much consideration as Starbucks coffee, Coors beer – or Coke is now. The only difference was that, in enough quantity, it got people merry and then flat-out drunk, just like today's Barefoot Moscato, 19 Crimes Cali Red and supermarket own-brand Pinot Grigio. Except that nowadays the ABV is higher, glassware better and volumes smaller.

 

By all means, try to stop wine being a 'fun', mindlessly-enjoyed beverage, and turn it back into stuff that is imagined to have once regularly have given 'weight to moments'.But don't imagine that, by moving to more mindfulness, you'll be increasing the amount of wine people drink.

 

My guess is that you'll be doing quite the opposite.