What's the difference between "luxury marketing" and "wine snobbery"?
Also a (surprising) podcast appearance, #winefactoftheday, a dinner invitation (for you), Nazis, S Club 7 (not related), lamp posts, Royalty, and Standpoint Epistemology. Obviously.
1. #winesnobberywatch
In BORING wine news 19 Crimes “calls out wine snobbery” with a “whine list”. Honestly, WHEN WILL THIS NONSENSE END?
My admiration for 19 Crimes is charted out in fascinating detail here - this Substack’s most read post ever. But this… it’s all so DULL and PREDICTABLE.
Wine snobbery is a hyperstition. (Although it probably makes me a “snob” for using the word1.) A hyperstition is “a belief that brings about its own reality simply through its very existence”. If the world tells you enough times that the it is filled with wine snobs… it creates a reality where we find ourselves in a world filled with wine snobs2.
So we have caricatures like this…
Tweed jacket, salmon trousers, ruddy nose and face. Owns dogs that have jobs (such as ‘gundog’). Believes any wine innovation to be bad, and is only interested in drinking the biggest, boldest reds he can get his hands on. Has a cellar which he will gladly take you into so that he can talk at you for hours about all the different times he drove to France to purchase wine.
I struggle to think of anyone like this. And I work in the business. Although standpoint epistemology3 would no doubt suggest that me claiming not to recognise this caricature is actually its existence. Curse my many privileges. And anyway, it turns out not actually knowing any snobs is not evidence they don’t exist.
Unfortunately, wine snobs are everywhere. However, they’ve got better at concealing themselves in recent years – they take many forms outside of overly-snooty sommeliers.
So your non-experience of wine snobs is no proof there are no wine snobs. So we’ll just talk about wine snobs until you believe the world to be full of them. Take the blue pill man. I’ve almost finished a book on sommeliers and I have to tell you I didn’t interview anyone who was even remotely snooty from across the UK, USA, China, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Nepal. But apparently we live in a world LITTERED with them. But I suppose it’s impossible for me to see them through my ruddy face and nose and boring stories I tell you endlessly about driving to France (which I’ve NEVER done).
Of course the sort of marketing managers who come up with these campaigns would be far above any sort of snobbery themselves wouldn’t they?
Surely they wouldn’t be exactly the same person who says they an MSc in Strategic Marketing called “Communicating the Luxury Dream with Advertising”? A course that presumably teaches you how to craft idealised images that appeal to aspirations of social superiority and exclusivity. Which sounds an AWFUL lot like snobbery to me.
If you find the modern world confusing, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Can Nick Bostrum please give us a new simulation?
2. #winefactoftheday
What connects Chanel, wine, and lamp posts in central London?
In the 1920’s Coco Chanel was friends with Irene Bretz, the wealthy owner of Chateau de Cremat in the tiny region of Bellet, outside Nice. Chanel was rather taken with the intertwined CC logo of the chateau…
Bretz agreed Chanel could use it for her own nascent fashion brand. I have heard (unconfirmed) rumours that in spite of Bretz’s generosity, subsequent owners of the Chanel brand have tried to stop Chateau de Cremat from using the logo themselves.
But what of lamp posts in London? If you walk round Westminster you’ll spot the Chanel/Chateau de Cremat logo on them alongside a rather fancy “W”.
And it is true that the Duke of Westminster - Hugh Grosvenor - was besotted with Coco Chanel, imploring her to marry him. Famously she rejected him saying there would be many Duchesses of Grosvenor “but only one Coco Chanel”. Even so, it was said the Duke was so keen to win her, he put her initials alongside his own on every lamp post in Westminster.
Tragically the truth is (in several ways) less romantic. The W and CC on the lamp posts did not happen until the 1950’s and stands for “Westminster City Council”. While Chanel herself went on to have a relationship with Nazi intelligence officer Baron Hans "Spatz" Gunther von Dincklage, was said to be a fervent anti semite, and collaborated with Nazi intelligence to use her position in British society to influence the outcome of the way.
#winefactoftheday continues to be a mix of light and shade.
3. Snob Safe Space dinner coming to St Albans
I’ve been out twice on school nights this week hosting tastings. Last night was at La Cave, a fabulous private wine club in Stockholm. Wednesday was with a group of collectors on the island of Lidingö. The collectors’ dinner is a regular event, with one rule - nobody is ever given a hard time for “being a bit of a nerd about the wines”.
Bizarrely there were no tweed jackets, salmon trousers, ruddy noses or dogs that have jobs. It was a group of friends who talked a bit about wine and a bit about childcare, jobs, Djurgåden’s prospects this season, a bit more about wine, how lovely the food was, and how the nights are fair drawing in. I told that very long joke about the Salford barber and the man who went to see The Pope.
Sounds fun?
Then come and join me and we’ll do it in St Albans, home of Hot Cross Buns, Pope Adrian VI4, and Paul Cattermole of S Club 7.
It’s a South American Fine Wine Tasting and Dinner, matched to a menu of South American specialities by Francesc Condal, Catalan Chef. The menu and line up:
Jamon Iberico with Catalan Bread with Brazilian Traditional Method Sparkling
First course: Ceviche with Amelia Chardonnay 2022
Interim wines: Terrunyo Carmenere 2019 and Amelia Pinot Noir 2022
Second course: Steak with Chimichurri with Don Melchor 2021
Third course: 3 Leches Cake and South American Dessert Wine
And it’s on Saturday, October 26 · 7 - 10pm.
Book your place here before tickets go live next week.
4. Hello!
My bucket list runneth over this week. I discover that I merit a mention in Hello! magazine.
Not bad for someone once described by The Scotsman as “sweatily lascivious” and The Canberra Times as “rather dull for most viewers”. (I’m not bitter.)
To try the wine that (the fabulous) Lady Amelia Windsor was talking about click here or head to merchants like Cellar Door Wines in St Albans (yes, that St Albans), Harrods, The Wine Society, Wright Wine Company, or Ocado.
As you can see below it goes wonderfully with sparkling dinner table chat. Even if he’s “rather dull for most viewers”.
Like I said, I’m not bitter.
5. A serious moment
This week saw the launch of “Julie in Genderland”.
This brilliant podcast is an investigation into children are being lied to and parents are being silenced by gender ideology. I play a very small part in it too.
It’s made by my (fabulous) friend
, the tireless campaigner for the rights of women and girls. I’m sure she won’t mind me also plugging her (brilliant) partner Harriet Wistrich whose book Sister in Law has been the best thing I’ve read all year.I play a tiny role in the podcast voicing “Adam”, a father interviewed by Julie who cannot be identified. His story was not an easy one to tell.
It’s brilliantly made, by turns shocking and extraordinary, and I hope you’ll listen.
For more on this CAPTIVATING sounding subject have a browse through the works of Nick Land and Mark Fisher.
If this sounds like circular reasoning then I can’t disagree with you. Although circular reasoning is a way of showing that an argument doesn’t exist. A hyperstition ignores that, and simply believes itself into existence. Even ontology has gone #meta. Although one might argue it was always was.
Here I am referring to Second Wave standpoint epistemology, not First or Third. It’s important to be clear about why I’m defining my own opinions out of existence.
Not the one in that joke about the Salford barber.
So thankful someone else has pointed out that Coco was a horrid human. I have been telling the world since my fashion designer days- but it seemed unless their families were also killed during the Holocaust they put her on a pedestal. 🤷🏻♀️ But on a brighter note- loved all of these today!