JUST WILLIAMS
Back to the old routine An enforced break from trade tastings has given us all time to reflect on what’s good and bad about these industry rituals. Does that mean the future is digital? Not entirely, says David Williams
T
he emotional consequences of
returning to a relatively normal daily life after 18 months
of restrictions and existential dread
are, I think we’d all agree, somewhat unpredictable.
I can’t say I enjoyed my first ride on a
packed London tube (freaked out might be a better way of putting it), but, to my
surprise, I barely noticed the first time I
was served by a mask-less shop assistant
(my wife pointed it out after we’d left the
shop), and my first visits to the local library and gallery felt immediately like I’d never been away.
Clearly, it’s going to take time, and
patience, plus plentiful supplies of mutual tolerance and respect, to get the hang of
post-pandemic life (even using that term with something resembling confidence makes me feel a little dizzy and glib). No doubt, we’ll all have different
responses at different times. Some of us will swing back into our pre-pandemic
lives with barely a second thought. Others may well wonder if there aren’t some
aspects of the past year and a half that
might be worth conserving or that, at the
very least, pose a few questions about our previous assumptions and priorities.
This is, of course, true of the specific
ways we go about our business in the
wine trade as much as any other part of our lives. Many of the things we used to
take for granted have been proved to be
rather less indispensible than we thought. Some of the temporary solutions found,
in extremis, during Covid, have proved to be more efficient, if not necessarily more enjoyable, than the things they replaced.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in
the field of the large-scale trade tasting.
Like many readers of this magazine, I used to devote an enormous amount of time
to attending these events: whole days – whole weeks in the spring and autumn tasting high season – spent navigating
interchangeable circuits of white tableclothtopped trestle tables, waist-high communal spittoons, and winemaker sales spiels.
I did it because I thought it was the best
way to discover new wines and vintages
and to assess the current state of play in a region, country, supplier or retailer, while picking up news and gossip and – let’s be
honest here – meeting up with friends and acquaintances.
But the abrupt cessation of pretty much
all public tasting activity in spring 2020 gave me plenty of time to consider the
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value of these events: a cold-eyed, cold-
turkey assessment of their place in the (or
at least, my) wine world that can be boiled down to the simple question: do we really need them?
I
t’s a question brought into sharp relief by a quick scan of the WSTA Trade Diary for September and October,
which is in full back-to-school mode, with two, three or four events each day.
And I’m sure I’m not the only wine
professional to admit to mixed feelings as
I imagine the effects that those weeks will have on my life: all the trains and tubes
taken, all the hours of “real paying work” lost (at the desk in my case, in the shop
for many readers), all the queasiness at
however many expectorations-per-minute in a room filled with 100 or more tasters. Beyond such personal concerns,
however, there’s debate about the merits
of doing your tasting in public versus the
Covid-era necessity of doing it at home or in the shop.
On the positive side of the ledger: for
sheer range of choice, and number of
wines tasted, the old trade tasting model
wins hands down. There are thousands of
