March 2025 IL MENSILE: the month that was

Maybe it’s delusional to view culture or politics or life as a Romantic

Hello all,

Lots of great articles to sink your teeth into!

Producers:
 
- It appears the rather miserly downturn in wine consumption is spreading across to the natural wine salons. Aaron Aayscough reports that at one southern French fair last month there were ZERO customers on day one (meaning the 20-odd producers tasted eachothers wine and had a meal together - so not a strictly terrible result).
 
In his Not Drinking Poinon “droplets” newletter he also takes aim at the turncoats – one of the organic variety, one of the naural (got to love his convictions). The whinge led to some interesting ideas around ageing wines and the implicit promise of what’s in the bottle:
 
“… the hot market of the late 2010s also inspired a lot of fuzzy, overcropped, volume-driven natural wine production, much of it négociant work. This would seem to indicate that greater and greater sales of (any kind of remotely) natural wine (in terms of units) is not, in and of itself, an entirely virtuous goal. 
 
“For more thoughtful natural winemakers, the present natural wine market might well suggest opposite tendencies : a conscious effort, in viticulture and vinification and sales, to produce the sort of wines that can benefit from longer aging periods pre-release, wines that don’t need to be sold as fast as possible as cheaply as possible. This is to say: lesser volumes of natural wine, but, often, better natural wine.”
 
- As I’m a bit sick of the nay-sayers, I’ve been enjoying this series on Romanticsm on the Everyday Drinking substack.
 
“‘You know, as this century rolls on, with all our technological changes, wine like this will be the only real thing that still exists,’ Tschida told [Jason Wilson]. ‘I really believe this. Wine won’t change. The real thing will still have to exist, just like in ancient times.’
 
“Maybe it’s delusional to view culture or politics or life as a Romantic,” Wilson continues. “Perhaps it’s an indulgence of the mind to think that pleasure can be revolutionary, or that drinking wine from a century-old vineyard could register as resistance. But these are weak moments of doubt. As old Immanuel Kant told us: Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.”
 
He concludes: “For those of us who see fine wine as an element of the good life, perhaps we are all trying to quixotically keep alive whatever “faint glimmers of civilization” are left in our tech-dominated age. My nagging fear is that we are already too late. That we are destined to the same fate as Monsieur Gustave. “I think his world had vanished long before he ever entered it,” says his former mentee, as an epitaph. “But I will say, he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace.”” I’ll be drinking to that.
 
- On the flipside, take a glance at this rather terrifying dystopian world of AI designing your restaurant menus, from MAD. Of course, there’s good in there too – tools to help with scheduling and waste for example. Fascinating times.
 
- Sue and Roger have written an excellent account of the different barrels used in French wine making – the terms, the dimensions, the quirks – in their monthly newsletter. They also run through a few French terms of interest – I like “ban de vendage” which announces the wine season. I’m guessing this is where the term marriage banns comes from (or vice versa)?
 
- On the topic of vessels, I was thrilled to see Giorgio launching his beautiful (really beautiful – those boxes are quite something!) wine in box, Vino Rosso di Digby - a wonderful Barbera with little grignolino and dolcetto from the Piemonte producer Carussin. As Giorgio notes: “Many people associate boxed wine with lower-quality products and tend to hide it, but my goal is the opposite … the wine inside is excellent, the technology is brilliant, keeping it fresh with every pour, and all of this comes with a lower environmental footprint …” I can report that they’re big news over here with a lot of fabulous producers adding BiB (bag in box) to their line up. In any case, Digby Wesbter’s artwork should be enough on its own to counter any goon shame. It's brilliant.

Restaurants:
- I loved this article in Punch on the politics and thinking behind “splashing” your valued customers (from their Pre Shift industry newsletter). It’s a look at the specialty treatment protocols for PXs (a term that is apparently VIP adjacent, an abreviation of the French “personne extraordinaire”): friends of staff, industry, investors, reviewers. Of course, these are varied among establishments: comped dishes, topped-off glasses, free desserts, prime seating, et cetera, and while this article focuses on the “splash,” I really enjoyed reading the thought beyond who and what.
 
- There is some interesting reading coming out of America regarding the changes in appetites for meat. Read Helen Rosner on La Tete d’Or and then draw what you will from America is Done Pretending about Meat in The Atlantic. Fascinating/terrifying to note the impact a shift in politics can have, even without legislated change.
 
“… the totemic simplicity of a man eating a steak fell out of fashion, replaced by more heterogeneous modes of conspicuous connoisseurship: nouvelle cuisine, the auteur-chef tasting menu, the thousand-dollar omakase, the members-only supper club. It wouldn’t be right to say that the steak house is back, since it never really went away, but there’s something in the water, and in the air, and in the newspapers, and in the pit of everyone’s stomach. Hemlines are dropping, or are they rising? The trend feels, if not promising, by any means, at least narratively cohesive: the rise of trad wives, the end of the flu vaccine, “quiet luxury,” the return of polio, the return of Donald Trump and his taste for, among other dubious things, well-done meat. To a person of a certain stripe, perhaps bored of being asked to broaden his horizons or consider experiences outside his own, the resurgence of the steak house, with its familiar social and gastronomic codes, forged in the fires of the mid-century middle class—Father at the office, Mother at the kitchen sink—might come as a restoration of the proper order, a glorious, carnivorous relief.”

Writing:
 
- Jay Raynor hung up his boots after 15 years with The Guardian. He wrote a good farewell column looking at the lessons of the years behind him I (obviously) take issue with his slight on natural wines, but did like: “Eating alone in a restaurant is dinner with someone you love and a delicious opportunity for people watching.” Hear, hear. He’s off to join the “Avengers ensemble” at the Financial Times: Marina O’Loughlin on eat, drink and travel; Jancis Robinson on wine; and Tim Hayward talking home-cooking.
 
- There was also an archived article from Alice Feiring on the power of lees that caught my eye (she describes it as the Swiss-army of wine making). It was this sentence that got me: “The Georgians leave their wine in qvevri on the lees for many months as well. And when they rack it off, they call it separating the wine from its mother. I can’t quite get the idea out of my head that the placenta is to the infant as the lees are to the wine.” 
 
- Finally, have you signed up to Luisa Brimble’s substack? At the beginning of March she published a raw and heartfelt missive, a plea of sorts for Filipino food to be viewed as a cuisine unto itself. “Filipino food at its core is contrast—but not just any contrast. It’s a push, a pull, a collision of extremes. Crunch meets softness. Richness meets brightness. Sweet meets savoury. It is where land meets sea, where fresh meets fermented, where vinegar bites against the deep funk of bagoong and patis.” It is a great read. And the response to it has spawned more writing. Sign up and follow along.
 
Until next time,
 
Libby