A few days ago I was invited along to a odd-sounding event, to see how music effects wine tasting.It struck me as a pretty obvious connection: given the right amount of claret even Schoenberg can sound tuneful. Nevertheless, in the spirit of pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge (as H.E.Hughes my old physics master used to say), and seeing as my diary was pretty empty at 5:30 on a Tuesday, I hoofed it over to the Henry Wood Hall in somewhere called The Borough to find out more.
The Borough is an odd area, near Guys Hospital and a big market affair. There seemed to be a lot of odd coves with ruffled hair, riding Italian motor scooters and talking loudly in strange, contrived Dick-Van-Dyke-style cockney accents. I have no idea what that is about.
Anyway, I found the hall in good time. It’s a disused church, now used as a gathering place for musicians when they’re not in the pub. Henry Wood was a musical chappie of some sorts, who married Princess Ourousov – an imposing Russian soprano that my great great uncle Bertie once had a fling with.
The event was hosted by some wine chaps by the name of Villa Maria who sound Italian but actually come from New Zealand. I must admit that I wasn’t aware that our New Zealand cousins were in to making wine. I’d assumed they were busy producing boot polish and those strange furry fruit that look so pretty when cut in half. In fact, a quick check in my Pears Cyclopaedia (the 1995 edition my aunt Elspeth have me when I went to work for the Home Office) tells me that they produce quite a lot of the stuff, as much as Switzerland in fact.
Villa Maria make a pretty broad range of wines, and the six we were served up were all very different, being made from grapes from all the different wine areas of New Zealand. My favourite was the crisp and lively Wairau Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2009, with the playful and citrusy Cellar Selection Riesling 2008 a close second.
Music was provided by some chaps from the London Philharmonic Orchestra who all seemed happy to help out, despite the pubs being open. They weren’t actually playing for us – union rules I guess, so the music was a selection of their recordings instead.
As well as the wine chappies and the musicians, there were a number of pretty young lasses who said they looked after PR. I assume that’s something to do with wine making, but I didn’t have the heart to ask.
It turned out that the idea wasn’t to test the effect of wine drinking on the music, rather the other way round – to see if certain types of music made the wine taste better. Once again, there seems to be an obvious link here. Rossini calls for spumante, Schoenberg for hemlock.
So we gave each of the wines the once over, then listened to some jolly pieces of music and tried to work out which tune matched a particular bottle. I diligently listened, supped and matched.
Then followed a general discussion, which boiled down to the musicians telling us how marvellous the music was, and choosing a wine that almost lived up to it, followed by the wine chappies telling us how marvellous the wine was, and choosing a piece of music that made them sound clever.
I have to admit, the conclusions weren’t altogether surprising – the jolly pieces being matched to the whites, the gloomy ones to the reds, with the rosé being best avoided altogether.
One final point: wine bods spit; musicians swallow.
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