G.P. 8 Kingsley Amis’ Ten General Principles

Wine preparation is important, but price is more so

Welcome back to the next iteration of my focus on the general principles Kingsley Amis lists in his excellent book, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis.

In the book, he lists ten general principles, which can be summarized:

1. Quantity rather than quality

2. For drinks accompanied by fruit or vegetables, try adding juice

3. Cold trumps concentrated

4. Cheap alcohol for mixing with juices

5. Bubbly drinks act faster

6. Soak fruit in liquor before adding to a drink

7. Commercial mixes are okay

8. Wine preparation is important, but price is more so

9. He who believes he has a hangover does not

10. Eating fattens you

To refresh yourself on past principles, feel free to follow the links above to previous entries. 

Ready? Let’s go!

G.P. 8: 
Careful preparation will render a poor wine just tolerable and very nice wine excellent. Skimping it will diminish a pretty fair wine to all right and a superb wine to merely bloody good. That is about as much difference as it will make. Much more important is price, which is normally a very reliable indicator of quality.

My boozy journey started with wine, before I fell into the world of cocktails. I've worked at wineries, in tasting rooms, wine bars, etc. For a good chunk of time, it was all wine for me. Spirits were just another category that I didn't pay much attention to aside from a gin and tonic here and there.

Where I usually agree with Kinglsey, I think times have changed a bit. Yeah, I think this G.P. is outdated! When he talks about preparing a wine for serving, which he detests, he isn't talking about a regular screw cap white that you sip with dinner on a Tuesday. He is talking mainly about vintage French bottlings that need a little more finesse. Odds are, unless you are a collector, work in the wine business, are just flat out lucky or, of course, loaded, you probably haven't come across the wines he is talking about for most of this chapter or most of the book as a whole. That being said, if you have any '70 or '71 Pomerol kicking around the cellar, not only should you be pulling that cork ASAP, please give me a ring, even though Kingsley recommends not drinking anything over ten years old!

Another issue is that wine regions come and go in terms of popularity and that influences price. There are certain regions and specific French villages that always lead the pack in how fashionable they are from year to year, but since this book was written, things have changed. Fluid dynamics, I guess. Funny enough, he raves about Beaujolais, and those tasty and crushable bottles are certainly in vogue now after only being thought of as Thanksgiving wine for a decade or two.

For a book written back in 1973, screwcaps and boxes of wine weren't thought of highly, if at all. The screwcap came on the scene back in 1959 but wasn't patented until 1976. Box wine or cask wine as it was originally called was invented by an Australian back in 1965. The wine world didn't accept the screw cap fully until 2011, and the jury is still out on Cardbordeaux. Now, in 2021, the quality of wine in both of those packaging styles has increased dramatically and shouldn't be overlooked in your search for a glass of wine to pair with dinner.

I highly recommend you giving this video a quick watch. It's funny and full of excellent screwcap info! Vive le screwcap!

In the chapter First Thoughts On Wine, Kingsley gives eleven steps to preparing and opening a bottle of wine, and if you haven't figured it out yet, Kingsley Amis is a satirist. The steps include all the necessary things like proper cellaring temperature, adequate serving temperature, glassware, removing the foil, corkscrew etiquette, chatting with "old shagbag" about different vintages and the like, but sadly ends with:

11. Do not enjoy the wine much yourself when you come to drink it.

Compare this with his two-step beer routine:

1. Five minutes before everybody goes "in," put one tin of beer at each place.
2. Let the sods open and pour themselves.

Not a bad argument for the ease of suds over grapes…

The whole point is that wine can be a bunch of work. He even contrasts the task to that of constructing a martini, the most troublesome and notorious cocktail there is, by saying, "sufficient trouble over a dry martini guarantees a good dry martini, whereas a hell of a lot of trouble over wine is in itself no such guarantee." Wise words, and a martini is certainly worth the trouble.

Perhaps his best advice is to find a good wine merchant and get over the price. He recommends buying wines for daily drinking at £1 and wines to impress friends at £3 (1973 prices, remember). Also, to trust your merchant if they have something special priced at £2. To bring those prices up to current figures, £1 in 1973 would be £10.72 today or $14.85 for those of us stateside. So his sweet spot for wine buying is $15-45. 

I would not follow his second suggestion to "hit your wine merchant across the mouth" when they recommend buying something to lay down and drink in a few years. Perhaps best to avoid both the assault and the buy now drink later philosophy if you are looking for daily drinker deals. Wine can certainly be an investment, and deals can be had if you have the space to put down some bottles for the future, but there are risks like all investments. Temperature, light, cork taint, gravity, nosy teenagers, etc., are all working against the wine collector. The only thing a daily wine drinker has to worry about is running out!

When it comes to drinking wine these days, I first like to remove the cork or cap and pour the liquid contents into a glass. From there, I like to angle the glass and pour the stuff directly into my mouth after a good sniff. Most of the wines I drink aren't special occasion wines, and most of them are in the low end of the price range that Kingsley recommends. They are for drinking. When it comes to a splurge bottle, I usually go for bubbles or something funky and French.

In terms of selection, I trust my wine merchants! I have been buying wine at a little shop here in town called Everyday Wines for years, and I will continue to do so because they never steer me wrong. One of my favorite reds over the past year for daily drinking comes in a box, and I was indeed skeptical at first, but again I would say trust your wine merchant. They do this for a living.

My daily white is a $10 blend from Gascony, Domaine de Cassagnoles. I drink it and cook with it. That red box I was talking about is a three-liter contraption that contains a delicious Burgundy from 2018 at $46 ($11.50/bottle), Herisson Vin Rouge. My little shop also puts together a handpicked six-pack every month based on the season, and I love to add to my orders. There is always something great tucked in there that I wouldn't have bought if I was label shopping.

Go find your Everday Wines and tell them what you like to cook, what you like to drink, and what you want to spend. Find that $10 house bottle and buy it by the case. You'll probably get a discount too if you buy in quantity. Don't be scared of boxes of wine or screwcaps. There are outstanding wines to be had at lower price points and you don't have to do much work at all. Take that Kinglsey!

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After writing all this out, I have plenty more to talk about, and so did Kingsley, which is why he added a few more chapters on the subject, Further Thoughts On Wine and The Wine Shoppers Guide. I certainly don't want to be a bore, but if you'd like my further thoughts shoot me an email, and let me know.

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Next week we take on the dreaded hangover, both the physical and the metaphysical. For next week's post only, I will be opening up the comments to all readers and not just paid subscribers to ask you to reply with your most useful hangover cure. A rising tide lifts all boats!

G.P. 9:
He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.

Thanks for reading!