D and Non-D

I’ve become very indignant about the way everyone knows everything about wine nowadays. Rather than saying ‘yes’ to a glass of red or a glass of white, people now agonise over whether they should order the pinot grigio or the pinot gris.

In much the same way that the English novelist Nancy Mitford used ‘U’ and ‘Non-U’ language to help recognize the different elements in English society during the 1950s (that is, if you were upper class you were ‘U’, and you called the toilet the lavatory; but if you were lower class you were Non-U and said serviette instead of napkin…) I want to re-introduce some wine terms that might help fellow wine indignants recognize one another. Wine indignants? Yes. Wine indignants are people who are thoroughly sick of the phoney professionalism that’s crept into wine, stealing from it its dignity. Wine is increasingly not enjoyed, but moralized over.

‘D’ and ‘Non-D’ – that’s how we should divide the world of wine snobbery. Drinkers of wine – the people who enjoy it, and lots of it; and Non-Drinkers of wine – the people who agonise over it, in constant pursuit of getting the wine right.

So out with the nomenclature of the contemporary world of wine and in with some new blanket terms. These terms will help ‘D’ drinkers find one another across a crowded room. Convivial fellowship might then proceed.

Hock, sack, white burgundy, burgundy, claret, hermitage, tent, port – and champagne as a blanket term for all sparkling wine, of course... ‘D’ people will be from now on use these terms whenever they order or offer wine. On the other hand, ‘Non-D’ people will be easily identified (and ignored) by the use of their infuriatingly precise and geographically brutal jargon – champagne has to be from Champagne, and that sort of thing. The ‘D’ terms are a form of jargon in themselves, of course; but they are also determinedly vague, facetious and never – ever – serious. This is how I plan to use them.

Hock. Hock is named after the German town of Hochheim, in the wine region of Rheingau. Hock was once known as rhenish, but only very silly old men use that term today. Hock is German white wine, so use it as an easy term for all the riesling or semillon/sauvignon blanc blends you drink.

Sack. This was of course Falstaff’s preferred drink. As Shakespeare has him say in Henry IV Part II: “If I had a thousand sons the first humane principal I would teach them would be to forswear thin potations and addict themselves to sack.” Sack back in the 16th century was a pretty heady Spanish white wine, an immediate ancestor to sherry. Which is why I’ll be now calling the greater volume of Australian chardonnay sack. It’s heady enough, and with any sort of bottle age it looks worryingly like sherry. Sack is also quite a useful term for viognier, whether it is old or young, it matters not.

White burgundy. If you actually find a semillon/sauvignon blanc blend you like drinking, call it white burgundy; otherwise this is a handy term to apply to any dry white wine. If the grapes used to make the wine are semillon, then call it ‘chablis’.

Burgundy. This is red wine that you can see through. We drink a lot of pink wine, or rose, in this country nowadays. Call all of that burgundy. Most merlot is burgundy – albeit from a ‘good year’. Grenache is also burgundy, but from an ‘exceptional year’. Anything reddish in hue and from Tasmania is burgundy. I think you get the picture.

Claret. This is red wine that is quite dry and quite tannic. Anything that has cabernet things in it is claret. There is one sub-category: luncheon claret. This is old cabernet wine from what is imagined to be a poor year. Claret comes from the old French, meaning ‘clear’, or ‘light’, which tells us something. Keep all your claret in a cellar and only drink it when it is ten years old. Then it is light luncheon wine.

Hermitage. This is shiraz. Very simple. Why we ever let this term slide I have no idea. Forget shiraz; forget syrah; stick with hermitage, or even ‘ermitage.

Tent. This is a 17th century term for deeply hued red wine, from southern Spain. Tent comes from the Spanish ‘tinto’. It more or less means a red grape. But it is hot in Spain, and the grapes get very ripe. Hugh Johnson has recently suggested that the English re-embrace ‘tent’, using it to describe all the shiraz from South Australia, and all the zinfandel from California. True story. So the next time you order some Barossan red, ask for ‘tent’.

Port. We are now set to rename this wine style ‘Dry Red Australian Fortified Wine’. This has happened under a recent Australian/EU trade agreement. Forget about it. I drink port. I use a biro. And I hoover the carpets. Language is more powerful than bureaucrats and administrators. And drinking wine can make language sing. But now it is time for my breakfast glass of hock.