Winebits 728: Wine snobs, wine and health, French wine

This week’s wine news: Wine drinkers are notorious snobs, plus we’re drinking less (honest) and why there will always be a French wine industry

• Bring on the snobs! About one-half of Britons think discussing wine while you’re drinking it is pretentious, and about one-quarter say they have pretended to know more about wine than they do. And we wonder why wine has the reputation that it does? The survey, given that it was done by a company that makes celebrity wine, may not be the most reliable. Still, the results reinforce what non-wine drinkers think about those of us who drink wine. And what does it say about wine drinkers that the survey noted that one-quarter of respondents said screwcaps are still used to judge the quality of a wine?

• Less wine drinking? Almost 40 percent of regular wine drinkers are actively moderating their consumption, particularly younger consumers, according to a study from the Wine Intelligence consultancy. This should only be staggering news (yes, bad pun fully intended) to the neo-Prohibitionists, who have insisted for some two years that we’re all passed out on the sofa each night after dinner – if we bother to eat dinner at all. The report noted that moderation could be “drinking less alcohol at certain occasions, or reducing the strength, or choosing not to drink at all at some occasions.” In the U.S., this included drinking lower alcohol wines and participating in things like Dry January.

• Only in France: The Wine Curmudgeon did a Zoom tasting last week featuring wineries in Bordeaux that make dessert-style wines. The tasting, given how rarely I get to sample these kinds of wines anymore because of higher prices and limited availability, was especially worthwhile. But the other thing that stuck out: The description of Chateau du Cros, one of the wineries. Only in France would someone describe their family as newcomers to the wine business, since they’ve only owned the winery since the World War I. Which is not just more than 100 years ago, but coincides with the beginning of Prohibition in the U.S.