Drinking wine from the bottle?

I was interested in this article in The Oz in which Foster's Australasian wine boss was giving his thoughts on wine. It's always fascinating to talk beer with business people. The average reader of these rantings - who I would affectionately call the beer purist - thinks that the only concern of the brewery should be to let the brewer make great beer. It would be a wonderful world, a better world, where that happened AND great breweries could stay in business, generate the capital they need to expand to keep up with demand etc etc etc.

Of course, in the real world, beer is business. Unit cost, innovation, distribution, porfolios, packaging, brands and brand values are often more important than what actually goes in the bottle. None of us really like it with our utopian ideas of beery nirvana, but that's the world we live in (butu please don't stop trying to change that world, one great beer at a time.)

So it was interesting to see David Dearie try to argue that wine wasn't a commodity these days. Wine still carries with it a cachet, a snob value, that beer will never and should never have. But, in my view, this is also one of the reasons that wine is so successful. I think there is a huge section of people who really like the idea of drinking wine, but don't really like the flavour - or know so little about it they just buy the label with the critter on it or the second cheapest on a wine list. The point is this class of wine drinker drinks it because they think that it makes them appear more sophisticated than drinking beer at a restaurant or elsewhere.

The theatre of wine, the need for the right glass (and Riedel has built an industry hyping that), the cork, the sniff and the pour all contribute to why people drink wine on certain occasions instead of beer. I'd love to see the pckaging innovations, and what it will do to the perception of wine, that will follow this comment...

"Dearie also wants to expand the number of occasions on which wine is drunk, with the traditional glass bottle excluding it from events where the hassle of carrying glasses and a corkscrew means drinkers tend to choose beer. The solution, he says is packaging innovation."

To keep its leading premium beer at events that don't permit glass, Foster's developed the aluminium Crown bottle. A really clever innovation that didn't change the experience in a major way (from taste tests we've done on the Beer Show, dedicated Crown drinkers say that they can taste a difference), but the shape of the bottle was the same and the experience - drinking from a Crown-shaped bottle - is largely the same. What can wine do? Plastic bottles will get the wine into events, but does "packaging innovation" and ridding the wine drinker of the "hassle of carrying glasses and a corkscrew" mean encouraging drinking wine from the bottle? Or will they develop plastic cups akin to the Berocca Twist 'n Go? Or maybe a wine cask/hat combo like beer yobs have used for years.

With 'innovation' in the beer leading to the brave new worlds of chill-filtered beer, low-carb beer and chromazone labels (that change when your beer is cold enough that you can't taste it), I can't wait to see what is in store for wine...

Beer –v– wine smackdown

About a year ago we did a beer versus wine smackdown on the Beer Show on 4BC. Three foods matched to three beers selected by me and three wines selected by James McIlwain from Southern Cross Wine Merchants who does a wine show on alternate weeks. On that occasion beer lost, 2-1. I was devastated. Last night we had a rematch. Beer won and won well.

The three foods were prawns, chicken satay and dark chocolate. The matchups were:

Prawns: Schneider Weisse Original –v– Meadowbank 2006 Riesling (Tasmania) Chicken Satay: Singha Lager –v– d'Arenberg 2006 Grenache (McLaren Vale) 75% Cocoa Dark Chocolate: Trois Pistoles –v– Rutherglen Port.

The judging was done by the host, Walter Williams, his producer, myself and James. Beer won the prawns match 2-2, but on points. Not convincing. I think if I had gone with Ian Watson’s suggestion of a nice golden lager, such as Jever Pilsner, I would have even done better, but the Schneider Weisse is an old favourite and I couldn’t be told. It worked but not perfectly.

With the chicken satay I had no clue what to match, as I wasn’t sure how it would be prepared. It ended up being quite spicy. I hadn’t had a Singha for several years and hadn’t realised that what was once an aromatic and fairly distinctive lager of 6% abv is these days a much sweeter, less hoppy beer of 5%. It was steamrollered by the spice in the sauce. Nice enough, but just didn’t stand up. In hindsight, I would have gone with something bolder – maybe even Alpha Pale Ale. I was amazed at how well the Grenache worked with it. Even I gave the round to the wine. Beer 0-4.

Then came chocolate. I knew I was on a good thing here. I pulled out Trois Pistoles from Unibroue. The Port went really well but the Trois Pistoles was superb with the dark chocolate. James declared the round even before the judging. Beer 4-0. Then I pulled out a haymaker…I had a packet of chocolate covered blueberries from the Noosa Chocolate Company. I passed them around and the panel tried again. The beer tasted very different, but worked. The panel was in raptures. Beer 4-0 and dancing around singing “In your face, wine!”

It was great fun and, as always, I found some wonderful flavours in wine and some surprising matches – that as a largely non-wine drinker I often forget. James is a great bloke with a fantastic palate. We might try and do a dinner somewhere together doing the same thing.

The great thing for me is that beer always holds its own in the match ups…something that surprises many and is another reason why increasing the profile of beer and food matching is good for beer.