Down with the ‘Death Buckets’

I just gave my support to this campaign to try and get bars to stop putting wine into those huge 250ml glasses – known as 'Death Buckets'.

This may seem an odd move from someone who has spent a long career encouraging wine drinking.

Well, yes, but I have also spent a long time writing about how to get the best out of wine and gulping down half pints of the stuff, is neither healthy nor a way to get the best out of wine.

The entire motivation of good winemakers (and people like me who really want to be good winemakers but settle for just selling good wine) … is to make their wine more and more delicious. So delicious that it is necessary to sip it sloooowly. So delicious it is just wasteful to swallow it quickly.

250ml buckets are just a way to sell mediocre wine. "Never mind the quality, just sluice the tonsils".

Let me be quite clear; I like big glassware; they are wonderful Flavour Amplifiers. I just don't like the pub habit of filling them to the brim.

The way I was taught. In France. Just a little wine, big swirl, big inhale. Ahhhhh! The dancing flavours … a little blessed spot of our planet's surface, a most remarkable and courageous plant and someone's toil, passion and talent. Life is good at such moments. Why cut it short?

SWS. Sip wine slowly. Live longer.

Thirsty? There's this great stuff called beer. And British beer is getting better and better. Check out your local micro today.

It’s clear that if the Wine Trade doesn't voluntarily abandon the practice of Larging It Up, the Government Will Act. And nobody wants that!