Henry Jeffreys

Alan Watkins, the late parliamentary sketch writer, told a story about his time on the Sunday Express in the 1960s. He was called into the office of his editor, Sir John Junor, thinking he was going to be told off for spending too much on expenses. Instead, Junor brought out a receipt from El Vino and said: ‘Only poofs drink rosé.’ How far we have come from those Neanderthal days. It’s not just Britain’s gay community knocking back the pink. Everyone’s at it. Jeremy Clarkson’s drink of choice isn’t beer, it’s rosé. As a nation we get through more than 100 million bottles each year. In fact, the British have enjoyed rosé for centuries. In the past, many wines would have been pink by default as all the grapes would be thrown in together.

Professional Englishmen and women – doctors, accountants and even journalists – could once afford to drink first-growth claret like Château Latour on a regular basis. In 1972, when the Daily Telegraph’s Guide to the Pleasures of Wine was published, Pomerol was still an obscure corner of Bordeaux, known for offering ‘very good value’. Those days are long gone. Prices began to take off in the 1980s, with Auberon Waugh blaming ‘American millionaires looking to impress their guests’. The 1982 Bordeaux vintage was highly lauded by a then-unknown young lawyer called Robert Parker Jnr who would go on to become the most influential wine critic in the world. After this, anything Parker recommended became unaffordable to most British wine-lovers.

Indians drink a lot of Scotch whisky. In 2023 the country overtook France to become the largest market for Scotch in terms of volume, according to the Scotch Whisky Association. But could the world's largest whisky market be about to transfer its allegiance? Donald Trump is certainly hoping so. Last week, on Valentine’s Day no less, talks between the US President and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi led to the lowering of Indian tariffs on Bourbon from 150 to 100 per cent (Scotch whisky, despite some spirited lobbying by the British government, remains at 150 per cent). Yet despite this, the real rival for the affections of the Indian middle classes is not bourbon, but the country's fast improving domestic products.

The German historian Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz wrote about British tastes in alcohol in the eighteenth century: ‘In London they liked everything that is powerful and heady.’ Not much has changed since then. Blame it on the weather, blame it on the food or blame it on the good times, the British have always liked their drink strong.  But for how much longer will we be able to cheerfully knock back the Malbec when a new duty system is implemented in February? Wines between 11.5 per cent and 14.5 per cent ABV will have their own bands per 0.1 increment of alcohol. Which means the tax on your favourite 14.5 per cent Argie Malbec will go up from £2.67 to £3.10. Before last year’s budget it would have been £2.23. Plus there’s VAT on top of that.

For the first 50 years of the corked bottle, there was no easy way to get into it. The combination of cork and a strong glass bottle came together around 1630 but the first mention of a device to open the bloody thing wasn’t until 1681. Cavalier get-togethers must have resembled the teenage parties I attended with everyone desperately trying to open the bottle using keys, pens, knives etc. Or using that technique where you bang the bottle against a wall with the heel of a shoe. Halcyon days. More likely they’d just take the top off cleanly with a swift blow from a sabre and a loud ‘Huzzah!’. Early devices for extracting corks were called ‘bottle screws’. According to Hugh Johnson, the word ‘corkscrew’ was first used in 1720.