Defending Wine Culture

00:00:15: Hello

00:00:16: and welcome to just another wine podcast with me, Doug Reg, Jamie Good and Emily Harmon.

00:00:22: This is our January recording and we're going to talk about defending wine culture.

00:00:29: I should say first that this is both an audio recording and a visual recording.

00:00:35: We're recording this for YouTube clips as well.

00:00:38: So if you're listening to us on audio, you can't see us pulling faces at each other.

00:00:43: So defending wine culture, what does that mean?

00:00:47: In the light of another tax duty rise on wine, I personally feel that wine is penalized far too often.

00:00:58: It is taxed, it's a means to an end, and it's just treated as any old booze.

00:01:03: And yet the history of wine shows us that wine is a really precious commodity.

00:01:10: It's much more than booze.

00:01:13: It is a substance that inspires artists, musicians, poets to great flights of art, I guess.

00:01:24: And it's part of community.

00:01:33: It's so much part of... different countries wine culture, different countries of gastronomic culture.

00:01:39: I just want to start by reading a short piece from Christopher Hitchens from his memoir called Hitch-twenty-two and he says that alcohol makes other people less tedious and food less bland.

00:01:52: and can help provide what the Greeks called entheus, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing.

00:01:59: The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament, the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana, is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judea.

00:02:12: The same applies to the cedar Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic Symposium.

00:02:17: Questions are asked, especially of the young.

00:02:20: While wine is circulated, no better form of sodality has ever been devised.

00:02:25: At Oxford, one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials.

00:02:29: The tongue must be untied.

00:02:31: It is not a coincidence that Omar Kayam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mulus of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime.

00:02:43: Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point to define the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors, even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity.

00:02:58: These small revolutions affirm the human.

00:03:01: When I read that, I feel like I feel happy that I love wine and that I share wine and can share in wine.

00:03:09: And this is not to put it in the terms that Christopher Hitchens puts it so beautifully, but this is something of what I feel about wine, that it has the capacity to inspire us, make us closer to each other, to celebrate culture, particularly food and drink culture.

00:03:31: And I just really wanted to get your respective takes on this, why we should perhaps be defending wine in what seems to be a very sort of Presbyterian age.

00:03:41: We're in dry January for God's sake.

00:03:43: Hopefully Gen Z is abandoned there as a sort of like, as a stripe.

00:03:48: But give me your take on defending wine culture.

00:03:55: Emily, firstly you.

00:03:58: I mean, one of my favorite things about this time of year is the fact that you're always quite outspoken about how you do not participate in dry January.

00:04:08: And that it's your moral obligation to continue drinking.

00:04:11: I just felt like that needed to go into the conversation.

00:04:16: I mean, obviously, maybe it's for all three of us.

00:04:19: I mean, we've centered our work around the topic of wine.

00:04:22: So the idea to sort of encourage people to not drink wine sort of feels a little bit foreign to me.

00:04:30: I think obviously we need to be mindful about how we're consuming alcohol and how we're behaving when we're consuming alcohol.

00:04:37: But if I think back to some of the most beautiful experiences, conversations, connections I've made is through a shared glass of wine.

00:04:47: It's a way to connect with people.

00:04:49: It's a way sometimes to have it's enough in common to have a conversation or a nice moment with somebody who is so different to who you are.

00:05:01: And I think today we get caught up maybe in like health and let's say social values.

00:05:11: But I think, for me, it's like, think about the romance.

00:05:16: How many babies wouldn't have been born if somebody didn't share a bottle of wine together, for example?

00:05:21: I think it's hard to separate it out.

00:05:24: It's definitely part of the culture I've grown up in.

00:05:26: It's been part of the culture I'm surrounded by.

00:05:31: It's also fun.

00:05:32: you know like it's not not drinking because it's like people don't drink wine to have a bad time most of the time.

00:05:41: and I think that maybe also the this connection not just with the people around you but to something bigger and beyond that because it is something made by people are the kind of wines I think the three of us like to enjoy.

00:05:56: I like to feel that there's almost like a spiritual resonance of exploring something through taste that something has been made with somebody's hands and with connection to nature.

00:06:05: and there's something very special about that.

00:06:07: and I think in this time where there's all of these studies coming out and different let's say different anti-alcohol propaganda, we do need to separate industrialized products like the cheap bottle of vodka or the mass produced beer that's on the supermarket shelf to the bottle of wine that maybe a family shares at dinner or a couple share or we get together as friends and we have a glass of wine and we talk about life around.

00:06:37: I think it's a very different thing.

00:06:39: I also think a lot of those health studies that we see today they're none of them are actually on like.

00:06:46: I haven't actually seen any studies that are actually tested on wine specifically.

00:06:50: they're just generic alcohol studies.

00:06:52: so I think we don't actually know how bad wine itself and the kind of wines that like we drink every day are actually how bad they are for the health.

00:07:00: and if there are negatives do they actually outweigh all of the positive attributes between like of us getting together and sharing a bottle of wine together?

00:07:11: for me I don't see when I put them on the scale.

00:07:15: I still want to sit and drink a glass of wine with you both.

00:07:18: Do I want to drink into oblivion and ruin my liver?

00:07:22: No, but there's a whole gap between the extremes of not having anything and drinking to excess.

00:07:32: I think you made some really great points there, Emily.

00:07:36: Jamie, would you like to take up some of Emily's points?

00:07:39: Yeah, I think so.

00:07:41: fantastic array of topics to kind of dig into.

00:07:45: The first thing I would say is that a general point that applies obviously far beyond wine itself is that the answer for misuse is not disuse but correct use.

00:07:56: So there's lots of things in our society that can be misused and the answer isn't to ban them.

00:08:04: The answer is to try and get people to use them correctly.

00:08:08: like an axe.

00:08:09: you know an axe is really good if you want to chop a tree down but you can also be used to dismember somebody.

00:08:14: but we you know it's.

00:08:16: it's.

00:08:16: you know use things correctly and they're good.

00:08:18: and I think wine has a really beautiful part to play in facilitating social interactions.

00:08:28: and you see it so often you meet you meet with a group of friends and maybe there's a few people who don't know each other so well.

00:08:34: and you notice after that first glass of wine suddenly the the barriers come down a little.

00:08:39: And the wonderful thing about wine is I think it does, there's a truth in drinking wine in a sense, we open ourselves up to each other.

00:08:49: We don't lose our mind.

00:08:50: It's not like mind altering in that sense.

00:08:53: We reveal our mind.

00:08:56: There's an important distinction there.

00:08:58: We're not taking a psychoactive substance that changes our mind and we're taking a substance that relaxes us a little and and gives a sense of well-being, but also opens people up to being more friendly and honest.

00:09:13: I guess sometimes, you know, the shadow of misuse of alcohol, it's a large one because it has caused in the past some very grave social ills.

00:09:25: But modest drinking, I mean, the evidence, I was a science editor for fifteen years and one of the conferences we had was on alcohol and cardiovascular diseases.

00:09:34: And it had also, so, you know, twenty-five world experts working on this subject.

00:09:38: And the message was this J-shaped curve, which is when you plot mortality against consumption, as the T-totalers do worse.

00:09:46: But there's an idea of the T-totalers here.

00:09:49: And as you drink more, your life expectancy goes up, your risk of death goes down, which is what makes the J-shaped curve about.

00:09:56: And then as you keep drinking more, then it goes up at the other end.

00:10:00: And the question often was, where is this idea?

00:10:02: The problem is with these sorts of studies, they're based on self-report.

00:10:06: And when you ask somebody how much they drink, they invariably underreport, either deliberately or subconsciously, or just not knowing how to measure what they've been drinking.

00:10:17: So really, it's very recently that we've had a backlash against this J-shaped curve, this idea that moderate drinking does have some beneficial effects.

00:10:28: and that backlash has come from public health bodies who have kind of won the war against tobacco and now they want alcohol to be the new tobacco because they need a cause to fight against.

00:10:38: and it's really very depressing to see these people kind of being intellectually dishonest because they are in some of the ways they're massaging the figures never think they just they're trying to make it look and preach this mantra which is that there is no self-safe level of drinking.

00:10:57: to try to shift public opinion against all forms of drinking.

00:11:03: And when it comes to taxation, the government's increasing the tax burden on alcohol, that will reduce consumption, because as booze gets more expensive, people can't afford it.

00:11:17: But I think it's also, it's kind of making real problems for people who are trying to do hospitality, who are trying to sell wine.

00:11:28: And it's making eating out and drinking out more expensive.

00:11:31: And the big social cost of that I think is very significant because if we can't afford to get together and eat and drink together in a nice setting, a public setting, there will be a social cost to that.

00:11:45: If you make eating and drinking very expensive, then basically drinking wine in a restaurant becomes a preserve of the rich.

00:11:52: I don't think that's a good thing.

00:11:55: I think it should be for everyone.

00:11:59: As you say, Doug, this

00:12:00: whole

00:12:01: historical continuity, a continuum of cultural richness that's been... And it's something that we can still tap into now today.

00:12:11: Even though it's not maybe something that's been... Maybe it's a borrowed cultural richness, but I think it's a good cultural richness, the culture of wine.

00:12:21: And I think that's something that... we should cling to because I think it's got a very valuable social role.

00:12:25: I love it when I go out and see people enjoying a glass of wine in a busy bustling hospitality setting.

00:12:32: It's fantastic and also in public.

00:12:34: And I love the fact that in the UK we still have a little bit of leeway in terms of public drinking.

00:12:41: I was in Primrose Hill last summer and we were sitting there and we'd gone and bought a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses.

00:12:49: And we're sitting there drinking wine, but there was a young people in their twenties and girls like the screw cat wine drinking out of the bottle But it wasn't like a drunkenness pursuit.

00:12:57: It was just celebrating being alive in a beautiful spot on a nice summer's day And I'm glad that the wine facilitates that whereas if you go to the US and you try and drink in public you'll be shut down pretty quickly.

00:13:09: so yeah

00:13:11: possibly shot down.

00:13:12: um They make a very good point again.

00:13:16: wine comes in a bottle and um I think if you go in the pub and you're drinking different drinks, like different cocktails, you're not sharing them, but you're sharing the bottle.

00:13:26: Each of you taking a glass, no one person can drink that much faster than other, it just looks horrible.

00:13:32: So there's that sort of element of pleasure.

00:13:36: And wine can also be the foreground, you know, amongst wine professionals, perhaps we talk about it, perhaps, but it can be the background, perhaps we don't.

00:13:45: And then there's food, and there's food and wine.

00:13:48: It's not the conscious matching that's important.

00:13:50: It's the fact that they're together.

00:13:52: It seems to be a very natural process.

00:13:55: And if I'm having wine with dinner, I don't think like, oh, I'm drinking alcohol.

00:14:00: This is not a consideration.

00:14:01: This is like a, you know, like I find it amplifies the pleasure I have from eating when I'm drinking something really nice.

00:14:11: And it doesn't have to be expensive either.

00:14:13: I think Jamie's point is very well taken that, you know, if the pricing continues, the taxes rise, and I actually, I parenthetically wonder how effective this is because you have really high taxes in Nordic countries and people who still have problems, very acute problems with drinking, and actually the less taxed countries, there's less of a problem in terms of alcoholism.

00:14:40: I think it's just a sort of it's a mixture of the health lobby being very militant and yeah thinking they can shut down people's pleasure.

00:14:50: I think their arguments are disingenuous to say the least and I think it's government trying to raise revenue and really honestly the more we know that the more you tax something the less revenue you eventually get from it because people will turn elsewhere or do something else.

00:15:06: so I'm very, very skeptical about that as a means of inhibiting people's pleasure.

00:15:15: But I really want to concentrate on pleasure because wine is such a beautiful thing.

00:15:22: Emily, tell us something about your interactions with people and places and how you understand the culture when you're at... when you're meeting these people and experiencing these places and how that sort of gives you greater pleasure when you come to drink the wines at a later date.

00:15:44: I think maybe a little nod in Jamie's direction from what he said before around the idea that like a barrier comes down.

00:15:53: There's an element of relaxation that occurs in the right setting with people and again it's like you could be somebody.

00:16:03: It's that connection point of being somewhere that's totally maybe even foreign.

00:16:08: I know Jamie, for example, has been to Japan.

00:16:13: I can't wait to get to Japan and see what it would be like to connect with wine people there in the vineyards.

00:16:18: I've been to the wine bars, but it's something that can bring you together.

00:16:22: Also, you don't even need to speak the same language as somebody.

00:16:25: I've had that where I've been in places, but somehow just through facial expressions and the shared act.

00:16:32: of sipping a wine together is enough to feel a connection to somebody and I think that's really powerful and it's meaningful.

00:16:38: and I think especially today where we've got these sort of social media bubbles and echo chambers that we're all kind of the algorithm shaping for us all the time we're.

00:16:53: I think it's becoming less common for a lot of people to have these interactions with people from different places, walks of life, social classes, not even being able to speak the same language.

00:17:05: It's one of the privileges we get through our work.

00:17:08: And I think it's super powerful, just also as a way to just sort of sometimes, oh yeah, we're all people, you know, like it is very grounding and humbling.

00:17:17: And I think it's that remembrance.

00:17:20: through different wine trips.

00:17:22: Obviously, we're planning to get to Georgia this year.

00:17:24: I mean, that's a place where I can't imagine going to Georgia and not having a glass of wine.

00:17:31: It's so ingrained in the culture there and the people, and it's ritualized.

00:17:37: The act of sharing wine and food together is a ritual, like what the tomato does with the toast.

00:17:44: It's almost a spiritual act.

00:17:46: It's very powerful, I think.

00:17:48: and I think through these acts that's how we kind of find ourselves you know.

00:17:53: so I think it's um yeah that's kind of what I'll say on that point and maybe hand over to Jamie.

00:18:02: that's interesting this whole spiritual aspect as well because I was just thinking you know thinking about the historical spread of wine a lot of the historical spread of wine has been through.

00:18:11: um you know I know no it's not ideal the colonial movement of of um religious people, mainly the Catholics, taking the communion wine and deciding they needed to put vines in so they could have wine for communion.

00:18:28: And I guess you've got that in many regions in France as well, that a lot of the custodians of these regions were monasteries.

00:18:37: And that's fascinating.

00:18:39: I mean, it's complicated going back into that sort of colonial history, but it's that spread of a culture that had wine as a part of it, that's taken wine around.

00:18:54: And I think that's, I just think that's really interesting, but I just think that that sense of bringing people together that wine has that Emily mentioned is very real.

00:19:05: And then when I've traveled, you meet people and the fact that you're in a social milieu, even though you're there for work.

00:19:14: you know you've got the two blended together means it's very quickly possible to connect with like-minded people.

00:19:20: and you know I think wine doesn't get enough credit for the the good work that it's done in social settings and it seems to be unique as well I think obviously beer and spirits have got cultures of their own that are important and we must recognize those.

00:19:39: but wine's linked to the table I think is the most interesting one.

00:19:45: And that idea that when we sit together, and I guess is where the whole Christian communion thing comes from, although it's very far divorced from the original setting, which would have been a meal, this idea that when you sit down with somebody to share food and drink, there's an intimacy in that act.

00:20:01: And I think that's why we should be a little careful about who we sit with and break our bread with, because there is an intimacy in that.

00:20:11: You want people who respect that your values a little bit and who are nice people.

00:20:17: But it does bring people together in, I think, a wonderfully powerful way.

00:20:21: And we don't talk enough about this.

00:20:23: We accept it.

00:20:24: It's become normalized to us.

00:20:25: But we don't say, wait a minute, guys.

00:20:28: It's not all about, does this increase your risk of this disease by point naught zero seven percent?

00:20:38: It's about the other stuff that you can't measure.

00:20:41: that's probably going to extend your life by far greater than any slightly enhanced risk of certain diseases.

00:20:49: You know, all sorts of foods give you slightly enhanced risks of certain diseases.

00:20:53: It's very easy to pick on alcohol.

00:20:56: And I think, you know, it's a kind of low-hanging fruit for the public health people.

00:21:03: And we should kick back against that.

00:21:07: Yeah, I totally agree.

00:21:09: I just wanted to raise something that or just continue something that Emily raised and I was thinking about the tomato the Georgian host the sort of top of the table who Who threw a process of communion brings together often strangers together together in a sort of like in a moment or over over a feast or a banquet or dishes and the toast themselves Acknowledge that wine is a gift.

00:21:37: It's a gift from the producer, but it's a gift that we are all experiencing at the same time.

00:21:44: I was once, I had the baton pass to me in Georgia to be a tomato for like a toast, one toast worth.

00:21:54: And the first thing I did was look around the table.

00:21:58: I wasn't sort of drunk, but I was slightly intoxicated and tired at the same time.

00:22:03: I looked around the table and I thought, what can I say that brings people together?

00:22:06: Because the role of the Toastmaster is to use the wine in a way to shed inhibitions, but also to not to get drunk, but to sort of tickle people's imaginations.

00:22:18: So, you know, floundering around, I proposed a toast which is full of metaphysical illusion.

00:22:25: I mean, I really was desperate.

00:22:28: And people thought it was very funny.

00:22:32: they thought it was witty and intellectual, whatever, may or may not have been, but I think the wine was speaking for me as well, and effectively the toast was for the wine and the people of Georgia, and it was all encompassing as well, and the people at the table, and suddenly these strangers became friends in that instance, and wine was the catalyst for all this.

00:22:57: and for a wonderful and memorable evening, which I'll sort of take back and live with forever.

00:23:03: And it's not just the Georgians who have this ritual.

00:23:07: I mean, it's true in other wine cultures as well.

00:23:11: But I often, when I experience a really gorgeous wine, and it can be at my own dining table as well, I think this is a gift.

00:23:21: Someone puts so much work into this and love tending the vines and careful winemaking.

00:23:27: and I'm drinking it and my mind is being taken to so many different places.

00:23:32: My imagination is soaring.

00:23:34: It doesn't always have that effect.

00:23:35: I'm not having full fledged epiphany every time I have a glass of wine.

00:23:39: But what other drinks can do this?

00:23:42: And I'm not talking about being drunk.

00:23:43: I'm talking about, as Jamie said, being in a state of relaxation and sort of harmony with my surroundings and that's very special and I'm not sure I can think of many things that do that like wine.

00:23:58: What do you guys think?

00:24:02: Is it one special case?

00:24:05: No, when you were talking I started to also think about some of the places that have let's say the best examples of longevity and people living a long health span.

00:24:18: So I was thinking of places like Icaria and in Greece and Sardinia and Italy, these islands where there's a daily consumption of alcohol in people that make it to live over a hundred years.

00:24:33: And I think that's also quite interesting.

00:24:35: going back to that moderation point and also how it can be something that you can live with and you can live healthily and for a long time still.

00:24:45: And I think that's also quite interesting.

00:24:47: maybe to pivot onto that point.

00:24:51: I also wrote down a note saying, time traveling through taste, which is for me one of the gifts that you get with wine, this re-experiencing a place through memory, through the association of flavour, that maybe you had that wine when you were there.

00:25:05: And I think that's something as well.

00:25:06: that's like, I've never had that with something else, maybe food to some degree.

00:25:12: But this amazing possibility of when you drink a bottle of wine, like I have images flash up, I have a sense of being somewhere that's not my living room where I'm sitting.

00:25:23: And I think that, again, is like a little bit transcendent.

00:25:27: And I think also like a very beautiful thing about wine that I enjoy.

00:25:32: that also keeps me wanting to drink an experience wine as well.

00:25:38: There's a really good point.

00:25:39: Similar experiences?

00:25:41: No, of course, yeah, lots of them.

00:25:45: It's time and space.

00:25:50: You can cross them with a good glass of wine.

00:25:54: And I think it's such a shame that we're made to feel guilty about drinking wine.

00:26:02: And I slip into this sometimes as well.

00:26:04: I'll open a bottle of wine and pour a glass, and I feel maybe I should be having a night off wine tonight.

00:26:10: And it's like, wait a minute, why should I have a night off wine?

00:26:12: Am I drinking too much?

00:26:13: No.

00:26:14: Am I drinking every day?

00:26:15: Yes, but why is that a bad thing in itself?

00:26:19: You know, to have a glass of, if you had a glass of wine with your meal every day or even two glasses of wine in your meal every day, there's no health implications of that.

00:26:29: As far as I can see from the literature, there's absolutely zero health implications of that.

00:26:36: So why is it that we're kind of allowing ourselves to feel a little guilty for doing something that's a gift, for receiving a gift.

00:26:46: And I think that's a cultural thing, maybe.

00:26:50: And some cultures are more prone to censoring other people's behavior than others.

00:26:56: And there's an element of which that sort of exerted control over others is ingrained in some personality types.

00:27:04: And I think it's really bad.

00:27:07: I think it's actually a societal problem when we start judging other people and trying to control their behavior.

00:27:15: Yeah, I agree.

00:27:17: My colleague Eric, who you both know very well, sometimes I remember one of the first times I met him, he said, like, wine is food.

00:27:25: Like, you know, this should, so you don't feel guilty.

00:27:29: It's like, it's nourishment.

00:27:31: It's physical nourishment.

00:27:33: You know, the best wine makes you feel good inside your stomach.

00:27:36: It helps you to digest.

00:27:39: I think it's also like inspiring.

00:27:41: I think it's mentally nourishing.

00:27:43: And as Emily says, both Emily and Hemi said, yeah, it makes you travel across time and space and takes you to places.

00:27:50: And the flavors remind you of experiences.

00:27:54: And in a way, it activates dormant parts of your brain, your memory, your imagination.

00:28:00: These are really good things.

00:28:03: We're not talking about being drunken and capable, but we're being intoxicated and inspired.

00:28:09: That's the beauty of wine is.

00:28:12: And the culture of sharing as well, we need to do more of.

00:28:15: If there's any time in history where we need to kind of take down all these dividing walls and bring people closer together, then I think it's now.

00:28:25: It's rather than putting up more barriers to separate people.

00:28:29: It's now no less, come who you are, wherever you are, whatever your background is, welcome, come and share in food, come and share in wine.

00:28:37: is a powerful message.

00:28:40: when you open a bottle and you start pouring glasses I think.

00:28:45: I also think we can't isolate what's happening in the world with this rise of sort of shaming people around alcohol because it definitely feels like a a reoccurring pattern of, you know, you think back historically of times of prohibition or when drinking was encouraged to go down, that usually went hand in hand with some kind of unrest, conflict, rise of political radicalization.

00:29:12: And we're definitely seeing that at the moment.

00:29:14: So I think this is also part of a bigger cycle.

00:29:20: And obviously some people are affected by that.

00:29:25: It's to do with controlling our lives.

00:29:27: I mean, it's true with governments, you know from prohibition onwards.

00:29:31: It's it's.

00:29:32: This is an exertion of control.

00:29:35: There's a great Shakespeare playing measure for measure which is said in Vienna from memory and They sort of pretty well prohibit sort of brothels and public sex and whatever.

00:29:46: but you can't control human instinct.

00:29:49: I mean if you if you have prohibition and people then start making their own alcoholic brew, because they fixate on alcohol.

00:29:58: But wine is like, as we've said, is a civilizing influence.

00:30:03: It can break down barriers.

00:30:04: Unfortunately, some people's freedom of the individual is what governments don't want to see.

00:30:10: They want to restrict behavior.

00:30:13: They see it as licentious.

00:30:16: The health argument, as we've said, is probably pretty bogus.

00:30:20: It's based on sort of specious research or no research or the research that they want to prove their point.

00:30:29: And I think the other point that's valid is if you have a society where people are abusing things like alcohol, there's two approaches.

00:30:41: One approach, which is a stupid one, is they're less trying to get them not to use alcohol to medicate.

00:30:49: There's the really sensible way of going about.

00:30:51: this is saying why do these people feel they need to medicate themselves?

00:30:55: What is missing or lost from society that is causing people to use alcohol and other substances to self-medicate in harmful ways?

00:31:04: You know, getting out of, you know, obliterated on a Friday night in a, you know, a town center and then starting fights.

00:31:14: You know, there's something that's not, you know, people don't do that if they're... have been satisfied and engaged.

00:31:21: And I think what we've lost to a large degree is this valuing our sort of neighborhoods, our cultures, our connections.

00:31:32: And so we have a crisis of connection.

00:31:34: And at the same time, people are kind of living their lives with the electronic heroine of television and entertainment and social media, you know, it's like something's been taken away and there's a need to replace that connection, but that connection that you get through social media, television, you know, that sort of entertainment, this sort of the Aldous Huxley soma, that doesn't actually satisfy the way that real connection does.

00:32:08: So I think that what we should be thinking always, how can we?

00:32:13: This is obviously a bigger than just wine is like.

00:32:15: how could what is going wrong in society?

00:32:17: How can that be corrected?

00:32:18: And there's some really good sort of ways of thinking about this I think and most of the good ones are bottom-up rather than top-down.

00:32:24: so rather than top-down solutions from government It's bottom-up from communities.

00:32:30: and if I was a politician I'd be trying to find a way of supporting and pouring money into those communities because it's much better to use that money to help communities grow and heal than it is to use that money to treat the symptoms.

00:32:44: and one of the symptoms is abuse of alcohol.

00:32:47: So it's a very short-term way of thinking.

00:32:50: Let's try and tax alcohol more and more so people drink less and then maybe society is going to start working better.

00:33:02: Yeah, as soon as you regard wine as a drug then in a way you put it into a corner and said well it's the same as other drugs.

00:33:12: But actually, as Jamie is correct, it's a societal problem.

00:33:16: And it's a lack of balance in our lives.

00:33:20: We work to live.

00:33:23: What do we live to work?

00:33:26: Whatever we're doing, we're doing it the wrong way around.

00:33:28: And I think so many things in our lives which would give balance are now regarded as something that we should not be doing.

00:33:40: And that's wrong.

00:33:43: I'd like to read a poem.

00:33:44: May I?

00:33:45: Yes.

00:33:46: Okay.

00:33:47: Pablo Neruda, Ode to Wine, published in nineteen fifty-four.

00:33:52: And again, I chose this because I think wine is such a beautiful, potentially beautiful, sensual thing, and the effect it has on us can really elevate our sensibilities.

00:34:05: Day-colored wine, night-colored wine.

00:34:07: Wine with purple feet or wine with Topaz blood.

00:34:11: Wine, starry child of earth.

00:34:13: Wine smooth as a golden sword, soft as a lascivious velvet.

00:34:18: Wine spiral seashelled and full of wonder.

00:34:20: Amorous, marine, never has one goblet contained you.

00:34:24: One song, one man.

00:34:26: You're choral, gregarious.

00:34:28: At the least, you must be shared.

00:34:30: At times, you feed on mortal memories.

00:34:32: Your wave carries us from tomb to tomb, stonecutter of icy sepulchres, and we weep transitory tears.

00:34:39: Your glorious spring dress is different.

00:34:41: Blood rises through the shoots.

00:34:43: Wind incites the day.

00:34:45: Nothing is left of your immutable soul.

00:34:48: Wine stirs the spring.

00:34:49: Happiness bursts through the earth like a plant.

00:34:52: Walls crumble and rocky cliffs.

00:34:54: chasms close.

00:34:55: as song is born a jug of wine and thou beside me in the wilderness sang the ancient poet.

00:35:01: let the wine pitcher add to the kiss of love its own.

00:35:06: My darling, suddenly the line of your hip becomes the brimming curve of the wine goblet, your breast is the grape cluster, your nipples are the grapes, the gleams of spirit lights your hair, and your navel is a chaste seal stamped on the vessel of your belly, your love an inexhaustible cascade of wine, light that illuminates my senses, the earthly splendour of life.

00:35:26: But you are more than love, the fiery kiss, the heat of fire, More than the wine of life, you are the community of man, translucency, chorus of discipline, abundance of flowers.

00:35:38: I like on the table when we're speaking the light of a bottle of intelligent wine.

00:35:43: Drink it and remember in every drop of gold, in every topaz glass, in every purple ladle, that autumn labor to fill the vessel with wine, and in the ritual of his office, let the simple man remember to think of the soil, and of his duty to propagate the canticle of the wine.

00:36:04: We should be defending that.

00:36:07: We should.

00:36:08: He is a bit of a sexual predator, though, no, Pablo Neruda.

00:36:11: I'm

00:36:15: going to lift out the sexy bit.

00:36:20: But

00:36:20: very nice.

00:36:21: I do like his poems, though.

00:36:22: They're some very, very nice ones.

00:36:26: Thank you, Doug.

00:36:27: That was great.

00:36:28: So I think on that point, I think we've kind of crossed a lot of different areas in our in our defense of wine, which needs defending.

00:36:37: It's really amazing.

00:36:38: It's so good.

00:36:40: And it's really tasty.

00:36:42: So I think we should we should know if I was in the government, maybe why does a mandate a natural wine bar in every town and very selling wine at very discounted prices from standard and and bring people together in a convivial setting.

00:37:00: That would be beautiful.

00:37:01: It sounds like you have our wine list in every town.

00:37:08: It's funny, whenever you go, no matter where you are, and whenever you go to a natural wine bar, you feel at home.

00:37:13: I mean, it's not just the names on the wine list, it's just the atmosphere, the people enjoying themselves.

00:37:19: Yeah, the lack of, it's just about being.

00:37:21: And it's like, as well, everyone's welcome, everyone's different.

00:37:25: I

00:37:30: wrote down a rhetorical question, maybe it's rhetorical, or I just wrote down a question saying, if we remove every pleasure from life, what's the point of living longer for it?

00:37:41: Yes, it seems longer.

00:37:49: That's a good question.

00:37:51: And we know, we know the answer.

00:37:57: Right.

00:37:58: Shall we take it away, Emily?

00:37:59: Do you want to lead us out?

00:38:03: Thank you everyone for listening.

00:38:04: you can find us on Instagram at just another wine podcast.

00:38:08: send us your questions ideas anything you want to hear from us.

00:38:11: we would love to get feedback and Thanks.

00:38:16: Yeah.

00:38:16: Thank you again for listening.

00:38:17: I'm Emily Harmon.

00:38:19: I'm Jenny good.

00:38:20: I'm Doug Greg.

00:38:22: See you next time.