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Wine Chauvinism

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I went to a party a couple of nights ago given by a couple of French friends. It was a splendid evening with many interesting guests (I counted 6 languages in action; French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, English & a word or two of Greek at one point).

I took along a couple of bottles of Australian wine, one pretty good but nothing to write home about (because I’m poor now) and one about which you probably would write home (because I know the wine and this one is worth the money). Of course, most of the bottles that were lined up on the kitchen counter as the party got under way were French (none of which I recognised except for a 1996 Carraudes de Lafite, Paulliac which mysteriously disappeared halfway through the evening! It wasn’t me, by the way, as I have a bottle of this that some very thoughtful colleagues gave me as a going away present once). I’d opened the lesser of the two Australian wines – a 1998 Penfold’s Shiraz Cabernet – early in the evening to get it out of the way (it was better than I thought it would be) and was planning to open the other (their Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon) later to gauge people’s reaction after they’d worked their way through some of the French stuff.

I never got around to it. By the end of the evening I noticed that the 407 was the last remaining bottle of wine! No one wanted to drink the damned Aussie plonk and yet, after sampling everything else, I can confidently say it was the best bottle in the house (apart, perhaps, from that elusive Paulliac).

Just goes to show that we’re all chauvinists in our way, however benign. I’m happy to report that it certainly didn’t extend beyond wine which, when you think about it, is probably the only permissible realm of chauvinism.

Well, and cheese, I guess. And olives…

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Posted to Oh, the Humanity • 2002.05.06 (Mon) • 22:16