Fair's fair

by Chris Losh

It’s a common criticism of the wine trade that it is overly-obsessed with the how and where, rather than why. That the trade can spend hours discussing the minutiae of soil type, barrel use and vineyard orientation, but generally finds it hard to come up with reasons why people should actually drink something.

It’s tough. Because soil, vineyards etc are, of course, what make wines different. But apart from Decanter readers, most punters couldn’t give a damn about that stuff.

And, frankly, why should they? A guy down our street bores the pants off me every time I meet him by telling me in minute detail exactly how he’s grinding out the gearbox or reflanging the clutch widgets in his car – totally unaware that my eyes have glazed over.

He simply can’t get his head round the fact that I have no interest in this stuff and just want a car that gets me from A to B.

And for 90% of drinkers, that’s pretty much all they want from a bottle of wine. Something that tastes nice and doesn’t break the bank. Plus, crucially, something that makes them feel good about themselves, for whatever reason.

Soil, oak and information about malolactic fermentation might do this for a small number of heavily engaged consumers. But human stories do it for a lot more.

I was at a tasting of Co-op Fairtrade wines the other day, and it was a genuinely uplifting experience. For starters, the wines were a lot better than those at the last Fairtrade wine event I went to three years ago. But the wines were, in a sense, secondary to the stories that went with them.

Hearing about this community in backwater Argentina that’s now got running water, or that one in the Cape that has built a school for its kids, all on the back of signing up to Fairtrade is intensely moving. Who, you might wonder, wouldn’t want to buy into this?

Well, interestingly, one of the exhibitors told me that the biggest opposition he has to Fairtrade wine is not from the evil horned beasts we call supermarkets, but from, you guessed it, sommeliers.

‘All of our wines are Fairtrade,’ he said, ‘but we don’t label them all as such. Sommeliers don’t like to see it on the bottle. It’s a problem in the on-trade.’

Once I’d picked my jaw off the floor, it got me thinking. And I realised that I can’t remember ever seeing a Fairtrade wine on a restaurant list.

Now, if anyone can tell me why a fantastic feel-good human interest story is a bad thing on a wine list I’d love to hear it.

Sure, the wine’s got to stack up. But honestly… surely yer average punter would rather hear about retirement homes, clinics and new sports facilities than ungrafted vines, oak toasting levels and percentages of Mourvedre.

In which case, where are they? And why aren’t bars, pubs and restaurants making more of them? It is, after all, a whole lot easier to understand than organic, biodynamic or natural wine.