Wine Snobbery?

Geoff has a nice post about wine over on his blog:

A Wine Peasant will proudly proclaim the virtues of their €6.99 bottle of South African Chardonnay. “…really easy to drink, and 14% alcohol…” as if drinking alcohol is a challenge and not something to enjoy and that extra few percent alcohol is just what we need to further remove us from our mundane reality. In fact the alcohol percentage is a legal requirement and only indicates the maximum, the actual content can be lower.

In some ways that would seem to sum up a lot of Irish people's attitude to alcoholic beverages. It doesn't seem to matter if the drink is good or bad as long as it has enough alcohol to get you drunk! I like wine. I think I always have done. I wouldn't spend large amounts of money on wine, but that's usually a matter of economic priorities more than anything else. When I lived in Italy I could afford to drink quite nice wine on a regular basis, whereas here wine is considered to be a luxury and is taxed to the hilt. The end result of the tax is that wines of very different values will end up costing almost the same price. Geoff does bring up some rather valid points about people's relationship with vinoculture. How many people actually know the difference between one cepage and another? At least the days of Blue Nun, Black Tower and those other excuses for wine are more or less gone. My local corner shop may not have the best selection of wine in the world, but there is enough to choose from regardless of your budget.