...BUT LIQUOR IS QUICKER
BEER AND WINE IN DECLINE?
To the traditional yo-ho-ho and ting-a-ling-ling of a Paris Christmas, two new sounds have recently been added; the clank-clank of wine bottles being furtively fed into a bottle bank and, periodically, the cacophonous crash as the contents of the bank are decanted into a garbage truck. Despite a steady increase in the size of these receptacles, they are almost always too small, and, particularly at holiday time, quickly become surrounded by islands of bottles for which there was no space.
Given the lavish consumption of wine this suggests, I was surprised at the news that, world-wide, wine-drinking is in steep decline. In France, the annual consumption of 120 litres per person annually in 1960 has sunk to just 30 litres today, with the trend still downhill. Hardly had I absorbed this news than someone in the brewing business informed me that beer is also subject to the same dispiriting statistic. Men, it seems, no longer split a six pack as they watch the Super Bowl telecast or bond over a pint at the pub. Neighbourhood bars have gone the way of the tobacconists as young people, disliking beer’s bitter taste, migrate to those spiked soft drinks known as “alco-pops.”
Never much of a drinker – or smoker - myself, I will be as sorry to see wine and beer disappear from social life as I was the ritual of smoking. I’m sure Pavlova’s Dying Swan and Bernhardt’s Camille were poignant but surely no more so than Bette Davis lighting a Lucky or Marlene Dietrich’s face obscured by drifting smoke
Alcohol, and in particular icy and gullet-numbing lager, played a leading role in my upbringing and that of most other Australians. It lubricated any social situation, solemnised every ceremony, inspired the reticent and solaced the despairing. In matters of sex, it was indispensible. Since, as Ogden Nash observed, “Candy in dandy/But liquor is quicker,” we overwhelmingly reposed our confidence in alcohol, even though it was as likely to quench passion as encourage it, and induce the humiliating state known as “Brewer’s Droop.”
Sophisticates favoured gin, but it was expensive, and demanded complicated mixers. As chat-ups mainly took place at parties or the beach, one could hardly arrive at either with a bottle of Beefeater and a choice of tonic, ginger ale or bitters (not to mention ice and slices of lime).
Failing gin, they relied on wine – for preference sweet, fizzy and white; qualities women were believed to prefer. In England, the market leader was Babycham, a “perry” made from pear juice, but Australia preferred Barossa Pearl. Launched in 1954, this poor man’s champagne was the brainchild of some German winemakers who fled Europe before World War II and settled in South Australia’s Barossa Valley. It blended effervescent white wine with fruit juice – initially apple or pear, but, later, pineapple - to create the even more obnoxious Pineapple Pearl. In order to attract non-wine-buying youngsters, it came in teardrop flagons of clear glass instead of the traditional dark brown cylindrical bottle, and with the difficult-to-extract cork replaced by a white plastic stopper. This last wasn’t entirely dictated by style. So fizzy was Pearl that stoppers could ricochet around the room like bullets, spanging off a couple of walls before losing momentum.
Barossa Pearl turned wine from the drink of an elite to something accessible and, above all, sexy. Did its makers anticipate its potent effect? Without doubt. The label featured playful little drawings of hearts, birds, musical crochets, and bubbles bursting with the word “Pop”. Above these gaped a dark and inviting cavity, supposedly the entrance to a wine cellar, its pale doors flung wide in welcome.
