We're Not Answering the Right Questions.

What can James O'Brien's Mystery Hour teach us about wine?

I bloody love Mystery Hour, I’ve been listening to it for years, though I rarely listen in live, so never get the chance to call in.

Even if I did call in, the producers wouldn’t really like me to entertain the nation with one of two answers:

“It depends” or “The question from the public is based on incorrect assumptions”.

Interestingly there has been two wine related questions on the show in the last few weeks. For pretty much my benefit only, here is what I might have said if I’d have had the inclination to phone in. There’s also some grumblings about the perpetuation of utter garbage within the wine sphere along the way.

Cheers,

Dan

Question 1

Skip to around 9 minutes in.

Question: “Is white wine sufficiently different to red wine, to explain the stories that the caller has heard in France and Portugal.”

Essentially, why does white wine wind you up? The apparently French saying ‘ça s'énerve’ was the inspiration.

The caller immediately declared that he hadn’t noticed the effect on himself.

The Answer: No.

The tricky thing here is that the question is built on an old tale that specific alcoholic drinks can have specific and markedly different impact on peoples behaviours.

We’ve probably all noticed it anecdotally. Pretty much every alcoholic drink I’ve ever heard of at some point has made somebody act differently.

The answer simply has to be phycological, and with a degree of intent. Research has proved that intent plays the largest role.

Scientists have studied specific alcohol-related beliefs called “expectancies”. If you believe a particular type of drink makes you angry, sad or sexed up, then it is more likely to.

The Caller Got His Answer

A winemaker called up and talked about red wines being being fermented on skins and that whites aren’t, as well as mentioning anthocyanin pigments and tannins. Clearly knew his stuff, but not really answering the question.

Weaved in that whites generally have higher SO2 levels than red wines, but then James tied that loosely with worse hangovers, and “other medical things”. To be fair he dropped in some factually accurate chemistry around SO2 and pH.

Essentially between them, James and the winemaker tried to tie SO2 levels to hangovers and levels of angriness, as a difference between white and red wine. Pretty sure SO2 is unrelated to whether white wine could make you more angry than red wines.

They did end up musing over that white wine generally has a lower alcohol content, and that as you probably drink more of it more quickly, it could just be the booze that is going to cause the issue. This is a much more realistic option.

The Bigger Issue?

There is a big lobby at the moment towards alcohol reduction, particularly the World Health Organisation.

In the US, they are almost set to say at a governmental level that there is no safe limit for consuming any alcohol. The NHS in the UK is moving the same way.

What confuses me is that these little things that trickle into our radios, ‘does this type of wine make me angry?’, is just feeding the beast. We’re not doing anything to discourage these kind of questions. We could however quickly dismiss them.

I’ll admit that a flippant radio show that invites pretty off-the-wall questions¹ is perhaps not the best lens with which to view frame this narrative.

Question 2

Skip to around 36 minutes in, a guy wants to “get interested” in wine after not drinking for many years.

Question: “If you go to a restaurant and order a posh bottle of wine that needs decanting, how do they ignore the decanting advise and send you a bottle of wine that will be second rate, served in sub-optimal condition, OR do they keep you waiting for two hours?”

The caller explains that he’s been buying “posh wine”, in the hope that it will make him want to drink it. The question was around the notion that these wines have some advise somewhere in the literature is that “decant 2 hours before”.

The caller explained he “didn’t want to be caught in a socially awkward situation with a very rich person.”

My issue is with the nature of the question. We’ve² passed on just enough awful information to wine drinkers that almost every single one of them is armed with a little bit of bad information.

A lot of ‘normal’ wine drinkers then drift into the world with these notions that wine has to be consumed in a specific way to be enjoyed properly. That these formal attributes, processes and serving techniques are the only way to correctly enjoy them.

Of course somms decant wine in advance for guests, of course guests are willing to wait for a wine to open up a little. But also of course, just drinking the stuff is mostly just fine.

These myths, and methods, and acts, and techniques, are bad stories that have to start somewhere. TikTok trends for hyper-decanting in a nutri-bullet come from the fact that someone in the wine business started telling people they should decant their wines, and it has spiralled out of control.

There are now instructional articles on the concept and best methods. It’s been legitimised, but it started with posh people being told to decant their wines 2 hours before dinner. You can’t trust Gen-Z with the smallest fact.

Earlier in the show there was a question on why we like the smell of petrol, and James used it as a chance to explain that the one thing he knew about white wines; is that to make himself sound posh, he’d ask sommeliers for a wine that smelled like petrol because he heard someone else say it once.

This speaks to the fact that people are flippant about the gleeful regularity of their wine consumption but slightly embarrassed by their level of knowledge on the topic.

What can we change?

I’ve seen people make a living out of telling people what to do and say, and how to act in certain way at wine tastings. Things that make my eyes roll as heavily as they possibly could.

It’s a good technique to hold a room for an evening, but an even better way to make customers think they’ll never get it right on their own.

Can we hit the reset button?

At the next wine tasting you host, start off by telling everyone to ignore almost every bit of advise they’ve ever heard and just enjoy the wine for precisely what it is.

1. Listen to the rest of the show for a pretty standard mixed bag of random questions.

2. The wine business