Columns
Columnists Cheap plonk? No thank you, says Nina Caplan; yes, Bill Knott will have some more trifl e; Loughlin Deegan, meanwhile, is too busy running a festival to eat
SPEAKERS’ CORNER
EUROPLONK IS ON ITS WAY CHEAP WINE CREATED BY BLENDING TOGETHER DIFFERENT KINDS OF GRAPE. BUT THE ONLY TIME NINA CAPLAN LIKES HER DRINKS MIXED IS OVER COCKTAILS… NOW WHERE’S THAT CHARDONNAY?
"WHEN I’M DEAD and opened," said Queen Mary pitifully, on losing England’s last foothold in France, "you will fi nd Calais lying in my heart."
Well, Mary, you can keep Calais. If anyone’s foolish enough to poke around in my remains, they’ll spot a Burgundy wine label plastered across all the important organs. Burgundy is the wine region most obsessed with "terroir" (a word which conveys a mystical sense of the power of the soil where vines are planted). And understandably so, given that the difference between one row of vines and the next can mean an entirely different wine and price. Other regions may not differentiate by the centimetre but they can still tell you where their hectares end and the other lot’s begin (and why wine made on their side of the stream is better). It’s called Barolo because it comes from Barolo, not because the word sounds good (although it does, rolling across the tongue rather like the deep red wines produced there). So what on earth was the EU thinking of when it came up with a plan to blend wines across countries something that’s currently illegal. It’s crazy.
Wines will be labelled according to grape variety and year: the fact that some of those grapes may have come from Italy and some from Bulgaria will be irrelevant. The logic is that this will help the lower end of the European market, which has been buffeted by waves of Australian and South American wines mouthy chardonnays, bolshy shirazes and swaggering malbecs that lower-end buyers have lapped up. No surprise, really: the production is consistent, the labels are clear and the wines are unsubtle but quaffable. Europeans have failed to get this: complicated classifi cations and descriptions on back labels are all very well if you’re a connoisseur or want to become one. But there is such a thing as too much information. If you go to an opera, you expect programme notes. Nobody turns up to pop concerts demanding a detailed critique of the band’s style. It’s not necessarily about quality: some things supposed to be simple. A pop song is one. A `just drink me’ shiraz is another.
So making life easy is a good idea, but this Europlonk won’t do that. It will allow dodgy producers to cover up their nefarious practices. ("It wasn’t me, who put the antifreeze in your Vin de Lavabo! Must have been the Czech blokes who pressed it.") All Europlonk seems likely to do is enhance the opinion (already pretty general) that European winemakers are a bunch of locos with no respect for the grass-roots drinker. If you don’t know your Right Bank Bordeaux from your Left and worse, you don’t care then you’re not even fi t to drink Vin de Pays (the basic classifi cation in most European countries, which translates as This Country’s Wine). Your fate is Vin de Nowhere.
This is an era where you can track your roast chicken back to its farmyard, and where we’re all supposed to pay close attention to provenance so we don’t accidentally destroy the planet while impressing dinner guests with a smart entrée. It seems absolutely the wrong time to start trucking vats of wine from one European country to another so we can mix them together in aid of fooling a load of drinkers in search of a legal high. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind if people want to infl ate themselves with unedifying plonk while I quaff the fi nest nectar that two millennia of vine cultivation on the Burgundian hillsides can produce. Unlike Bordeaux, my favourite wine region is small: I don’t fancy a shortage because the whole of Europe suddenly decides to drink Louis Jadot Clos Vougeot instead of rotgut. Who doesn’t prefer decent wine when they try it?
Surely it makes more sense to spend this money making good wine cheaper or bad wine better. This mix ‘n’ match idea is like a vino cocktail gone badly wrong. If I want a cocktail, I’ll ask for a Cosmopolitan thanks very much. But just leave my Chardonnay alone. Nina Caplan is the arts editor of London Liteare
FLYING THE FLAG
BILL KNOTT JUST CAN’T KEEP HIS HANDS OFF THE COOKING SHERRY
THE RECENT RENAISSANCE in British cooking has done much to drag many of our national dishes from the culinary dustbin, but some, I fear, have simply become irredeemably naff.
Take, for example, the poor old trifl e. Back in the 18th century the trifl e was an exuberant concoction: a base of sherry and Madeira cake for the traditionalist, with macaroons and brandy for the truly decadent, drenched in fruit and proper custard, then smothered with syllabub and sprinkled with toasted nuts: a very sinful, grown-up pudding.
Now look at it. Lurid jelly and stale sponge, tinned fruit and powdered custard, topped with synthetic cream into which glacé cherries have leached their counterfeit crimson. No self-respecting six-year-old would touch it, let alone a decadent gourmand.
Why, then, has the trifl e been so debased? Partly because it has been replaced in middle-class affections by that Italian upstart, tiramisù. A well-made tiramisù is, of course, a thing of beauty and a joy forever, but the amount of coffee in it is like a shot in the arm unlike the deliciously post-prandial snooze-inducing trifl e. The Italians, interestingly, call trifl e zuppa inglese: English soup. Nobody knows why.
To be honest, I don’t even mind a trifl e made with custard powder and tinned fruit, as long as there is plenty of sherry-soaked sponge, the cream has actually been somewhere near a cow, the dish is nicely chilled… and there are no children in the vicinity. The hijacking of our greatest grown-up dessert by the young is nothing short of scandalous. Trifle was not meant to be enjoyed amongst balloons and party games, or squashed into carpets by marauding toddlers; it was designed to soothe and indulge, to promote a benign outlook towards one’s fellow man. It is a little-known fact that it is physically impossible to eat sherry trifl e while frowning. It’s time this queen of English desserts was reclaimed. Bring back the proper custard, bring back the syllabub and macaroons… but, most of all, before the dear old trifl e rolls off into the sunset on the sweet trolley of oblivion, bring back the booze
CULTURE VULTURE
DON’T MISS DUBLIN THEATRE FESTIVAL, SAYS ARTISTIC DIRECTOR LOUGHLIN DEEGAN
DUBLIN IS CHANGING fast. An economic boom lasting over a decade, combined with redevelopment and mass immigration has transformed the built environment and altered its demographic radically. These days Dublin is a great, outward- looking city but it wasn’t always this way.
Established in 1957, the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival is the oldest dedicated theatre festival in Europe. When the Festival was originally launched, it would be safe to say that the nascent Irish state was somewhat suspicious of foreign infl uences. During the first Festival, Alan Simpson, the director of The Pike Theatre’s production of Tennessee William’s The Rose Tattoo was charged and arrested for showing for gain "an indecent and profane performance" due to the supposed use of a condom as a prop. The case that followed went all the way to the Supreme Court, became synonymous with Ireland’s harsh censorship laws, and led to The Pike Theatre’s closure. The following year the Festival was cancelled following clerical objections to the proposed world premiere of Sean O’Casey’s The Drums of Father Ned . How times have changed…
From 27 September till mid October, the Festival is presenting an expanded programme to celebrate its 50th anniversary. And just like the fi rst Festival, we’re looking forwards, not back. We’re offering 34 shows from 13 different countries, major outdoor events in the City’s redeveloped Docklands, and a new late-night season including a show from contemporary dance troupe Sankai Juku. Times may have changed, but we never say no to a little controversy.
The Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival runs from 27 September to 14 October; www.dublintheatrefestival.com
