There is something vaguely onanistic in two contributors to the same website taking opposing views in back-to-back columns. As a reader, you are left with the sensation that instead of reading opinions, you are eavesdropping on an argument in the staff canteen. So, I was reluctant at first to put together a rebuttal to Guy Woodward’s latest piece on the Politics of Wine. But it was such a strong expression of a common category error, that I thought I ought to give it a shot. You can blame Tim for not having a staff canteen for us to sort it out.
The central thesis appears to be that politics influences wine drinking choices, the type of statement that “feels” right, mostly because we would like it to be, as it would make the world a simpler place. But when Guy tries to marshal evidence for his argument, what steps up are non-sequiturs.
Let’s take it from the start. The old Decanter troika of Steven Spurrier, Hugh Johnson, and Michael Brodbent MW is put together as evidence of conservative views begetting conservative drinking. By contrast, Andrew Jefford and Jon Bonné are presented as “liberal” (in the American sense, one can only assume), and their books an expression of this.
Which makes me wonder if we are talking about the same people. Spurrier pretty much singlehandedly put California, and, by extension, the whole of the New World, on the fine wine map, by setting up the most important wine tasting of the
