Education, education

Despite the danger of pandering to the nanny state, it is hard not to sign up to the idea of the Government educating children in schools about the rights and wrongs of alcohol.

There is a concern about alerting them to issues that may be years ahead of them, but it may lead to mums and dads having to answer some awkward questions from their children, which inadvertently might be the best responsible drinking message we or the Government can ever get across - and for free.

The issue of wine education is a recurring theme in this issue. We have independents lamenting this weekend's Wine Show event in London as being a missed opportunity to educate consumers, instead appealing to the lowest common denominator with too many supermarket-style branded wines on show.

But if it succeeds in getting hundreds of wine drinkers through the door is that no bad thing?

If education starts with big brands and Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio, is that no difference to the thousands of people who started going out for a curry every week and ordering a chicken tikka masala, who might now have progressed to a lamb kashmiri?

The trick is to get people there in the first place. The challenge and the skill then comes in how we communicate, excite and motivate consumers to go and try and new things for themselves.

The underlying theme of Malcolm Gluck's sparklingly controversial book, The Great Wine Swindle, is education. Be it what wine producers put in their wines and on their labels, to what wines buyers then choose to stock, to what wine writers and critics decide to plug - it all comes down to what the consumer is being told.

Gluck thinks the average wine drinker is being led a merry dance all the way down the line. But if more and more people are taking a full and active part in that merry dance, surely that's better than not been involved at all?

The crucial issue at stake here is that we grasp the opportunity to educate and enthuse our customers. We need to earn the right to be in that classroom and, once there, we have to take it.

Richard Siddle is the editor of Harpers magazine.

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