For a while, cigarettes have been the villain. The gobby stumbling troll at the Disney princess ball who didn’t exactly receive an invitation. Smokers, much like their vice, have been kicked to the fringes of busy roads, suffering the wide nostrils and forced coughs of the vexatiously unburdened by addiction nay-sayers. France for one, has banned branding on cigarette boxes. Opting instead for grim pictures of rotted lungs, blackened gums and my personal favourite: A couple, side by side in bed. An ashamed and mournful disposition of the male character and the raining rage of a woman disappointed on the fairer end. A subtle warning of the risk of impotence. Cigarettes have been spoken about in the same tone as bad decisions as well as life threatening illness, and that is all good and well. But something curious has happened. It is not a full comeback, and definitely not a triumphant roar. But a gentle return to the culture.
Could we learn something from cigarettes to help build wine culture? Maybe we can. But to establish that, we need to find out what it is about cigarettes that makes them so moreish to our over-optimistic wellness world.
Gwais
I was told that I should probably mention this at some point in this column: Don’t smoke! It’s dumb...or whatever. But if you doom scroll for long enough, especially if your algorithm is set to bombard you with wine and food nerdery. You’ll find that the smokers' aesthetic will slowly start creeping into your feed. A smoke-tainted, grainy, black and white photo. A hand in perfect pose, cigarette hanging. A moment distended in time; a model outside an old bar, cigarette smoke being sucked out of the window of a car. The cigarettes are present not as a sign for addiction, but as punctuation. The imagery we’re seeing is not just saying “I smoke”, but perhaps lend to something deeper, something a little more dangerous: “I feel something”.
The aesthetic is that of mood, of sentience, of risk. Whether you smoke or cough loudly at smokers, the impact of the imagery is still valid. And maybe this is why we are seeing a bit of a resurgence on social media. Cigarettes in recent years have been categorised as simply a dangerous product. Cigarette marketing can’t even happen in this country. But it seems that they are slowly inching their way back into a more symbolic lifestyle choice. The uncomfortable hypothesis that I am putting forward, is that wine, with all its history and romanticism, has been doing the opposite. It has stopped being about feeling. In fact if you’re drinking for the sake of drinking, it is probably to feel less. And here is a risky statement to make: if you’re tasting, you’re not really enjoying a glass of wine, nor being very social.
The smokers' corner
Let's start with an element of the lifestyle that is not often talked about, but sits as a cornerstone of the smokers lifestyle. Ironically enough, the smokers corner is a result of smoking being annexed from “civilised society”. Smokers have long been banished to the unseen and unheard corners of public spaces, drawing a noticeable rift between smokers and non smokers. Not to mention the inconvenience of having to trek a measurable distance to get your fix. But here is the thing: Smoking is inclusive, its unpretentious, and because of the lengths made to separate the “great unwashed” smoking population from the matcha-kale juice junkies, smoking breeds camaraderie in exile. The smokers corner is a natural gathering of human beings, out in the cold, looking for warmth and notes of toasted hay, charred leather, and deep roasted agarwood. Lighters are shared, smokes are bummed, socialisation happens.
Drinking has historically been deeply intrenched in human culture as a social lubricant. Whether alcohol has helped us bond, connect, celebrate or relax, it has probably done all of those things repeatedly in our lives. And for the most part, I think alcohol still serves that purpose. People still gather around bars, we still bring our favourite tipple to the braai, and we still crack open a something after a long week at work. But I see wine featuring less and less here, and it isn’t because its not a delicious beverage (because it is), but because wine in South Africa suffers from one of the most disparaging processes, and no its not natural winemaking. It’s social gatekeeping. While cigarettes, stripped of advertising, has found its way back through aesthetics and identity. Wine, with all its storytelling potential has fallen into the trap of technical correctness. “Don’t use that glass”, “drink Cabernet from this area only”, “eat this with that”, “don’t wear perfume”, “don’t hold your glass”, “don’t make this fun” (essentially).
A tavola non s’invecchia
This Italian proverb seems to highlight the problem for me. It means "at the table, one does not grow old". And I think that builds a wonderful appreciation of slowing down, connecting and joy in community building over food and wine. The key here is slow living. To really take the time to do nothing. Il dolce far niente (or the sweetness of doing nothing) is another proverb I hold quite closely too as it ties up slow living in such a poignant way.
And this has been my experience of being a smoker. It is about taking a moment, stepping away, or joining in on something that is indulged in for no other reason than it feels good. Unfortunately (yes I’m aware it is different, in different parts of the world), wine in South Africa, is turning more academic, especially if you’re lucky enough to be drinking something good.
The wine community want wine to be taken seriously, and yes from a professional level (if you’re a sommelier, or a winemaker for instance), acid levels, pH, residual sugar, alcohol percentages and terroir matter, but we’ve forgotten to give the consumer a reason to care. How does the wording we use to sell wine influence how it makes the end user feel about the product?
Wine people would like to have everyone think that a good Burgundy is the equivalent of being brought to the alter of the lord. They tell you how they sang and fell in the church. That they still wear the cardigan that was draped over them as they laid there, open and breathless. But honestly, nothing tastes that life changing (especially given how expensive “good” Burgundy is). This kind of hyperbole is, by definition, misleading and causes a further rift between people who don’t age at the table, and the ones who feel like they are sitting an exam.
The truth is, wine hasn’t survived this long as a cultural phenomenon because of anything technical, nor anything overtly romantic. It has survived this long, because the majority of the wine drunk and truly enjoyed around the world, is not Grand Cru Burgundy, or Pomerol, or Storm or Sadie or or anything with Gran Reserva on it. It is the wine us wine geeks drink when we don’t want to think about wine. It's nothing limited, nothing coming from a single vineyard, nothing we've felt the need to age. Its the bottle that is poured once we’re done showing our friends how great our taste in wine is. Its the drinking bottle, not the one you taste. Its the wine we don't talk about it. This is where the identity, aesthetic and the enjoyment beats its pumping heart.
Insomma
I would like to say that my favourite wine pairing is a Peter Stuyvesant and the second bottle of some indiscriminate Rhone blend from Swartland, because it is. But for fear of being dragged into the streets and being chastised till I wish I was being flogged, I won't say that here. I'll just keep that to myself.
But what I will say is this: We age the wine drinking demographic by erecting false standards of what it means to enjoy wine. Both in terms of how old you have to be financially to afford the “good stuff” and how much academia and high brows you’re willing to expend your energy on to “truly taste what is in the glass”. Cigarettes don’t have these issues. As a consumable product, it is consumed, loved, hated, outcasted, welcomed back in with moody imagery, shared, but most importantly enjoyed by people who wouldn't take up a second of their day to find out where the tobacco comes from.
Il dolce far niente! I want my wine to age, I don't want to age myself thinking about it at the dinner table. I want to enjoy each glass as it comes and not have to pick it apart. I've talked about this before, but we need to allow ourselves to enjoy wine the way we do beer, or in this case, a cheeky cigarette in the smokers' corner where the glasses in our hands are not being biopsied, but simply acts as a lubricant to talk about the things that actually matter.