Why #sherryweek fails and other stuff for Friday

Bin-Ends and Interventions. The real reason #SherryWeek never works, wine superstitions, this week's recommendations, jokes, and more

Shameless plug

Click on the link immediately to listen to the first episode of The Welcome Wagon podcast from “the people who bought you Drinking with Joe and Maya. Now available on Spotify and Acast. Each episode starts with a single word, and then delves into how it affects the world of drinks. Listen in or I will sneeze in your general direction.

ICYMI

Apropos absolutely nothing in the news this week (*cough cough Andrew cough Windsor*) I revealed the dark and astonishing story of Geoffrey Prime. I have a fascination for the “lost” personalities of the wine business. The first “influencers”. The man who invented luxury Champagne. The first British woman wine writer. And Queen Camilla’s extraordinary, wine-writing grandfather.

But this is by far the most extraordinary, loathsome, traitorous, and repulsive character to have worked in wine. It is some small comfort that the story reveals just how bad he was at it.

I think some of you may have a single paid-post unlock. This is one to try it on.

Why #SherryWeek will fail

It’s that time of year again. It’s International #SherryWeek. The multi-award-winning campaign to get us all drinking Fino, Amontillado, Oloroso, and Palo Cortado 8my favourite).

And it works. Kind of. Businesses have reportedly enjoyed sales increases “of up to 500%” as a result of Sherry Week. So why is Sherry the wine business’s perennial Next Big Thing that never breaks through?

One answer could well be at the bottom left-hand corner of this graph:

At the last UK General Election, Sherry was the only alcoholic drink with a clear lead among Conservative voters. In fact it had a very clear lead among those voters, a group - lest you need reminding - who suffered a crushing defeat at the polls. Not to mention a group who had a median age of 63, were likely to be retired, and less likely to have a university degree.

The French philosopher René Girard came up with the notion of “mimetic desire”; the idea that we want things because we associate them with people we admire. This is the basis of celebrity wine brands.

The problem for Sherry is the opposite. People actually quite like it, and indeed many would happily drink it. But they don’t because of “identity avoidance”. This is an idea from social identity theory where people avoid things that are associated with out-groups they don’t wish to be mistaken for.

#SherryWeek is in many ways a marvellous thing. And I do urge you to enjoy a glass of Sherry this week. But the campaign it will always struggle as long as people avoid Sherry for fear of being mistaken for the sort of person who votes Conservative.

Wine Superstitions

The recent événements of Halloween recalled a list of wine superstitions I collated some years ago. They come from the “Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World” published in the mid 19th Century.

Some feel suitably Halloween-y…

Clover gathered from heathen shrines, ancient graves or ruins on St. John’s eve, will make beer or wine exceedingly good if thrown into it.

Not to mention ghostly…

German vintners say that a white lady wanders at night through the vineyard; if the season is not to be prosperous, she is closely veiled, hides a bunch of keys, and weeps; but if it is to be prosperous, she smiles and rattles her keys gaily.

Although the precise nature of the ghost can change. Proof, perhaps, of terroir…

Vintners go to a spring at midnight at New Year’s; if the year is to be prosperous, a little man will stand there with three ears of corn in one hand and three bunches of grapes in the other; if the year is to be bad, he will have a sour face and empty hands.

Outside vintage predictions, there are an extraordinarily large number of wine-related superstitions related to amethysts:

It is believed by some that wine-colored amethysts will preserve a person from intoxication.

The reason why the amethyst is supposed to have the power to remove drunkenness is (we are told by the Arabs), “because, being bound on the navel, it restrains the vapors of the wine and so dissolves the inebriety.”

And amethyst’s benefits don’t end there. Apparently an “amethyst hung around the neck from the hair of a baboon, or the feather of a swallow, it is a charm against witchcraft. The amethyst also kept off hailstones and locust plagues.” Winemakers aren’t often plagued with witches and locusts, but the hail thing could be useful.

But the most obscure and unlikely wine superstition has to be the one that…

In Surinam, exists the belief that wine will sour if a woman comes into the cellar while it is being bottled.

Suriname is a distinctly tropical climate almost entirely known for the production of rum. So I struggled to believe that there were many… any cellars at all where women or men could walk in during bottling.

It turns out I was wrong. There is a single winery, soRena’s, in Paramibo, the capital of Suriname. Although it makes wine from oranges, ginger, and… aubergines.

This week’s wine-jokes

…probably make most sense if you are in the UK.

Wines of the Week

And for paid subscribers, here are this week’s wine recommendations.