The Sour Grapes Manifesto
What is Sour Grapes? Or even, who is sour grapes? A mysterious playboy on a St Tropez yacht quaffing rosé and champagne. A bookish, wine map fanatic, hell bent on discovering the ‘next big thing’ once global warming ratchets up another level? Perhaps I’m an amateur geologist, obsessed with soil types for vines, working away in a hastily constructed laboratory. Or, perhaps I’m a mildly enthusiastic wine wanker who’s very much overstepping my mark in arrogantly deciding that more than my cats and my fiancée need to hear why I think we should all be drinking crémant?
We’ll never know.
Think of me like the wine equivalent to your rotten tomatoes, offering titbits of information on the wine world, particular regions and, most importantly wines you’ll want to try and fill your cellar/wardrobe/shed with. Let’s keep it simple with the Sour Grapes Manifesto:
No wine is off limits: whether it’s bag in a box rose or vintage champagne, every wine is treated with the same reverence and subjected to the same rigorous cross-examination
Our main point of focus is wine in the £10-£15 bracket. Stuff you can get in your local Tesco/Sainsbury’s/M&S, as opposed to the stuff you have to pay a sherpa magic beans to deliver to a PO Box on a magic carpet
Wines are scored 1-5 with a 1 demonstrating a ‘good wine’ worth your cash, and 5 representing orgasm-inducing fireworks that you simply have to try if given the chance.
We don’t mention wines that are crap unless it is our public duty to make you aware that they are a danger to your painted floorboards
Every dog has its day. You might see the odd bottle that you need to sell a vital organ to afford (a sore subject for me) but you’ll also see and taste wines that make you think, “ that’s cheaper than two pints of Guinness in a London pub”
All wines tasted are paid for out of our own stretched wallets. If we get given bottles of wine to taste and they make the grade, we’ll tell you they were a lovely freebie (PLEASE SEND ME FREE CHAMPAGNE, KRUG). I’m nothing if not subtle.
All wines tasted twice, hours apart where possible.
The Sour Grapes Rating System
I’ve capitalised that to make it seem as important and grand as the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale or the Bristol Stool Chart. Mystifyingly, wines are rated against a range of systems. Most popular for a time was the rating out of 20, for which it was particularly rare to see a wine achieve less that a 12. With the introduction of Robert Parker in the late 1970s to rate wine as an independent, beholden to no particular broker or winery, his 100-point scoring system is now the most popular around, although it is incredibly rare to see a wine get less that 70 out of 100 – so what’s the point? I suppose “100-point wine” has entered the oenologist’s lexicon as a paradigm of wine-making brilliance, so to revert to a good old rating out of ten might take the shine off, which is exactly how I felt when the FIA tinkered with the Formula One scoring system in 2010. Alas, I digress.
What to do? Well, I’m keeping it simple, just like me. Marks out of five, with the important definition that a one is a good wine, well worth your time (remember, no stinkers here) and a five is absolutely worth jumping on a plane to taste.
The “Sour Grapes Rating System” in all its garish glory
1 – A good wine, good value for money and it won’t let you down
2 - Offering a step up in class and finesse from a 1, a pleasure to drink
3 – A very good wine worthy of the finest dinner parties. Will delight
4 – A quite outrageous effort, a special wine which hits all the right spots, and some you didn’t even know existed
5 – Stop the press. A marvel. A rarity. A wine you’ll remember where you were when you drank it and first experienced its orgasm-inducing, heavenly notes
Lets go tasting, shall we?