You are a critic; I have good taste. Discuss.
“Taste, which enables us to distinguish all that has a flavour from that which is insipid.”
A few years ago I was invited on a Radio 4 programme called A Matter of Taste to cogitate, ruminate, eructate and generally discuss how to appreciate wine. The deliberations inevitably turned to the vexatious matter of what constitutes good taste in any - and every - respect. Is it purely a middle class notion based on a bunch of aesthetics cobbled together from the Style section of the Observer or the Indie? Is it more than knowing the best (or trendiest) restaurants to eat in, buying the choicest ingredients from a farmer’s markets to make delicious dinners based on recipes culled from one of the half dozen River Cafe cookbooks that you have gathering dust on your shelf.
It is simple to caricature this desire for self-improvement (and to be seen as comfortable with the new aspirational demotic) as a matter of faux-aesthetics. We would not presume to lecture someone as to whether they should go to a football match or spend a night at the opera, to skim Jeffrey Archer or plough dutifully through Cervantes or Joyce. How we enjoy spending our time is one thing, but our eating and drinking choices and habits affect both the physical environment and our bodies. By buying from artisan producers we encourage more environmentally-friendly farming and an all-round more ethical approach in terms of respecting the sustainability of the land. Besides it was never an intensively farmed “level playing field”. Industrial farming has been massively subsidised for years by government tax breaks. By being prepared to pay more for quality we show that we are sensitive to the many choices on offer as opposed to buying things without discrimination.
We all know Brillat-Savarin’s oft repeated dictum “You are what you eat”. Why would we not desire to discover more about the provenance of food and wine – we shovel stuff into our bodies without knowing whether it contains hormones, chemicals or preservatives. For all the foodie TV and bookshops bursting with the latest faintly pornographic offerings from celebrity chefs, food itself in Britain is largely a convenience (look at the hold of the supermarkets) and mealtimes are for many an inconvenience. We seem to have lost the connection with the seasonal rhythms of land, with raw ingredients, with our culinary heritage.
It is surely not elitist to challenge people to improve their awareness. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver have vividly demonstrated that you can change opinion by, for example, showing consumers what goes into certain manufactured dishes or revealing the cruel conditions that battery chickens suffer. When all the information is presented then people can make their choices. Knowledge is power. It is impertinent to assert that it is snobbish to guide and educate; a little admonitory counter-didacticism is permissible if it leads people to question what they are being literally force-fed.
As to whether good taste in food is elitist because only the well off can afford it, well, the answer is that junk food is cheap for a reason. Good taste is not about frills and presentation; it is about nourishing, tasty food at whatever price. There are countries in the world where people happily subsist without junk food, spend less money and still have very healthy diets.
My problem with cheap wine is that it is part of a mass production process that encourages monoculturalism, genetic modification and destruction of natural habitats. Diversity is not big companies making lots of different wines and creating larger monopolies, but about many small growers doing their own thing in the most sustainable way possible.
As for good taste I worry about the notion that wine is somehow perfectible. How can a wine achieve perfection? By satisfying the palates of all the major critics and judges? Well, did Van Gogh paint to win competitions? There is no great genius without some touch of madness, as Seneca said. Taste is the recognition and celebration of individuality – it is not about assessing the “quality of the wine” and giving it a grade.