Having spent a  fair chunk of my career as a professional drinker – writing and broadcasting about the stuff (mostly whisky), two Glenfiddich and two Guild of Food Writers shortlists, one Fortnums award (for Holy Waters, published last year, still available folks) I do think a lot of nonsense is talked about the various mood-changing swallies.

When it comes to the florid, sometimes torrid descriptions of whisky that used to emerge from the annual World Whisky Awards competition (of which for several years I was a judge), and still sprawl across the pages and TikTok channels of supposed connoisseurs, I always shake my head and wonder: what conditions were these drinks being sampled under? What had the judges consumed beforehand for breakfast/lunch/dinner? How hungover or refreshed were they? What had they been reading/watching on TV before they came up with those gunsmoke or Dean-Martin’s-leather-sofa comparisons? And  crucially, how many whisky samples in a row were they drinking?

Because the key factor in whisky is that it is extremely alcoholic. And yes, alcohol is a wonderful carrier of flavour and smell – which is why it’s used in perfumes – but it also blunts the perceptions, anaesthetises the sensory organs and befuddles the brain. Indeed, its capacity to alter mood is key to whisky’s social function. Conviviality is aided by having your synapses…soothed. In small or moderate quantities, this can be a fine thing. But of course, take too much ethanol and all kinds of bad things can happen. From collisions to contusions. Confusion is assumed.

Wine is not as alcoholic as whisky but the language used to describe its various manifestations can be even more ridiculous. Nevertheless, I have come to the conclusion that:

1 – Wine does vary in quality (like whisky) it can be good, bad or indifferent

2 – Describing a wine’s attributes (or a whisky’s) is necessary, if only for branding and sales purposes

But how do we do that in a way which makes sense to ordinary people who DO NOT SPIT WINES OUT, are probably mixing their whisky with anything from Vimto to irn Bru and are looking for bang-per-buck rather than an elusive aroma of a particular heather or seaweed?

Another thing: the cost of a bottle of wine, given Scotland’s minimum pricing laws, bottoms out today at about £6 per 75 cl, and given other taxes,, transport, bottling and markups, that will mean the actual liquid in the bottle has a value of around 30p, unless the retailer is operating a bankruptcy-inducing loss-leader system. Yet really, if we up the anti and pay £25 for 75 cl of wine, are we really getting better, tastier liquid, or just being fooled into paying more to prove either how tasteful and rich we are, or how generous? How much we balue the social situation we’re bringing that bottle to?

Whisky’s various dirty secrets include the fact that unless you’re drinking a single cask malt (and can be assured of traceability to that one barrel), it’s all carefully formulated blends, either of casks from a single distillery (up to a certain age; ‘12-year-old’ means the youngest whisky involved is no younger than 12) or any old malt and grain spirits, all calculated to meet a particular taste and aroma profile. This can be a secret kept in the brains and noses of experienced blenders, or these days with ‘the help’ of gas and liquid chromatography, electronic ‘noses’, atomic absorption spectroscopy and other pieces of scientific black magic.

Anyway, leaving the cratur aside for now, for years I’ve been a member of the Wine Society, have ordered wine from Laithwaites (since back in the days when it was Bordeaux Direct) Naked Wines and Virgin and of course bought from supermarkets and off-licences (the Co-op remains my favourite, and is recommended by wine business friends as having top class buyers).

As it happened, I was in Tesco one day…and i was thinking, when it comes to white wine, as long as it’s cold…

Blasphemy, I know. I mean, £6 a bottle?

And I was gazing into the sink, thinking, Marqués de los Zancos, eh? It’s only six quid. Worst comes to the worst, I can pour it away…

Did I? here’s the video: