Sue: It's nothing very special, I'm afraid …
Beverly: [Unwrapping the bottle]: Oh, lovely! ‘Cos Laurence likes a drop of wine, actually.
Oh, it's Beaujolais. Fantastic! Won't be a sec, I'll just pop it in the fridge.Footnote 1
It is telling that wine featured conspicuously in Abigail's Party (1977), Mike Leigh's celebrated satire of suburban social climbing. Theatre audiences famously mocked the chilling of red wine as a damning social faux pas, the comic actor and diarist Kenneth Williams noting how they howled ‘knowingly’ at the ‘bad taste’ lines, ‘loving their superiority’.Footnote 2 A subsequent BBC television adaptation prompted similar reactions, coupled with a flurry of letters in the national press about the correct way to serve wine.Footnote 3 For at least some wine connoisseurs, however, the real joke was on the snobbish audiences, since many experts maintained that Beaujolais was best served lightly chilled.Footnote 4 With one critic later pondering flippantly whether ‘any beverage in any work of art had excited quite so much comment or controversy’, it is apparent that Beverly's Beaujolais moment hit a particular social and cultural nerve, capturing both the enthusiasm and the snobbery wine could conjure in 1970s Britain.Footnote 5
British interest in wine increased markedly in the second half of the twentieth century, with consumption undergoing ‘phenomenal growth’ especially during the 1970s.Footnote 6 From 1960 to 1970 consumption doubled from 3.6 pints per head per year to 7 pints. By 1980 this had leaped to 17.9 pints, and by 1990 to 32.1 pints.Footnote 7 While wine drinking was far from the ubiquitous everyday habit long associated with wine producing countries like France, Italy and Spain, during the 1970s the habit of drinking wine increased in popularity among a growing section of British society. While the 1980s and 1990s clearly witnessed important developments in the popularisation and democratisation of wine drinking, including via the remarkable popularity of New World wines, a focus on the 1970s affords opportunities to explore the growth of the mass consumption of European wines in Britain.
The developments of the 1970s were linked to broader shifts in cultures of recreation and domesticity. Here social class proved an important factor. Prior to the Second World War wine in Britain had tended to be the preserve of the wealthy and affluent, but especially from the late 1960s interest spread across a broader section of the population, chiefly among the middle classes.Footnote 8 As consumption rose, the socio-cultural norms shaping wine drinking were both consolidated and contested. While elite associations with luxury became less dominant, many continued to link wine drinking with social cachet, and certainly perceived it to be more culturally refined than, say, more commonplace beer drinking. There remained a sense that to really appreciate wine the consumer had to acquire knowledge about wine culture, especially in terms of different varieties and how best to serve them. Experience and experimentation with wines would, when combined with understanding, help cultivate good taste – in terms of both gustatory perception and socio-cultural distinction.
Wine's popularity among the British middle classes was inextricably linked to its entrenched associations with continental cultures and refinement. The transformation of mass tourism in the 1970s via cheaper travel and package holidays afforded new opportunities to experience first-hand European habits and cultures, which in turn had a marked effect on attitudes towards wine consumption.Footnote 9 Moreover, the popularity of continental cuisine, especially from Italy and France, also helped propel interest in wine, as was witnessed in both domestic cookery and restaurant cultures. As travel became more common and continental cuisine became more fashionable, many consumers came to (re)imagine and (re)enact European social habits. For some at least these social and cultural developments were doubtless inspired partly by broader developments concerning Britain's relationship with continental Europe, especially in relation to the United Kingdom's entry to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 and the referendum on membership in 1975.Footnote 10
Alongside discourses emphasising continental sophistication, the 1970s were also marked by popularisation of wine. A wave of new British wine writing and connoisseurship emerged from the mid-1960s, with older traditions of elite, exclusive (and often masculine) authority increasingly downplayed in favour of a more inclusive wine culture that welcomed a new generation of enthusiasts who wished to learn to appreciate wine while at the same time eschewing what they saw as overweening and outdated snobbery.Footnote 11 The notion of wine as an accessible drink became central to its growing acceptance as a normative middle-class habit in this period. Britain had long been a leading importer of wine, but by the 1970s new demand for affordable wines was met increasingly by supermarkets and off-licence retailers. Greater availability encouraged experimentation in the context of home drinking, in both occasional formal entertaining, but also more everyday family dining, especially during holidays and weekends. The appearance on the high street of affordable, easy to drink (often sweet) wines was greeted enthusiastically. For many, the emerging status of wine as distinctive but ordinary constituted a striking link with broader class cultures developing at this time. As Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite has argued, the latter third of the twentieth century saw a shift in middle-class cultures away from older preoccupations with deference and tradition but also continued emphasis on status as displayed through consumption. She argues persuasively that the middle class were ‘obsessed with individuality and not being conformist, even as its members generally seemed to sign up to a fairly narrow range of lifestyles’.Footnote 12
Gender also played a key role in the development of wine drinking cultures in 1970s Britain. Affluent dining cultures, in both restaurants and in domestic settings, increasingly normalised and promoted wine consumption among men and women alike, but connoisseurship, especially of fine wines, tended to be linked overwhelmingly with masculine cultures of expertise. As this article explores, however, during the 1970s understanding of wine was increasingly promoted among, and indeed by, women as well as men, in both specialist wine publications and broader domestic advice literature. Such was the growing acceptance of wine drinking among women that a 1980 public health survey on alcohol considered that, especially in comparison with beer and spirits, women had become the ‘dominant purchasers and consumers’ of wine.Footnote 13
This shift in attitudes and practices towards wine was underpinned by several interconnecting factors, including the increased availability of wine on the British high street. First licensed in the early 1960s, supermarkets became increasingly significant as wine retailers in the next decade. There was broad acknowledgement of the convenience of shopping for wine alongside other groceries and goods. That women were the main shoppers in most households fostered a new and close connection with wine cultures. While exploration is beyond the scope of this article, it is clear that the wine trade, like the drinks industry more broadly, was devoting much more attention to women consumers at this time, including by advertising in women's and cookery magazines.Footnote 14 Greater availability of wine encouraged experimentation in the context of home drinking, in both occasional formal entertaining, but also more everyday family dining, especially during holidays and weekends. With women largely responsible for food preparation and cooking in the majority of households and wine a notable feature of popular cuisine, the 1970s, then, saw significant developments in terms of the gendering of British wine cultures.
In spite of this significant shift in wine consumption and connoisseurship in the 1970s, wine drinking in twentieth-century Britain has been relatively neglected by historians of alcohol.Footnote 15 The increase in wine consumption after 1945 has received scant attention beyond brief mention in alcohol surveys spanning several centuries and in popular narrative histories of drink, as well as in a handful of broader social histories.Footnote 16 While scholars including Betsy Thom and Alex Mold have addressed alcohol regulation in the mid-to-late century, fuller historical interpretation of popular drinking cultures in the second half of the century merits development.Footnote 17 Moreover, while historical understanding of viti-viniculture in European nations is well-developed, exploration of transnational cultures of consumption prompts inclusion of British habits, especially given the long established importance of the United Kingdom as a wine importer.Footnote 18
By focusing on the changing attitudes to wine and wine drinking in 1970s Britain, this article considers the ways in which wine operated as a positional good. It explores the multi-layered socio-cultural meanings attached to wine by drinkers who sought to distinguish their consumption by acquiring and displaying knowledge of how best to buy, serve and drink wines, while at the same time drawing wine into more everyday practices of dining and entertaining. It considers how middle-class consumers, particularly women, constructed, articulated and performed social and cultural scripts that privileged wine as constitutive and emblematic of status and sophistication and explores the emergence in the 1970s of new kinds of ordinary distinctiveness in British middle-class wine culture, which eschewed both overweening snobbery and excessive credulity that any wine was good wine.
While of course acknowledging wine drinking as an embodied, performative act, this article considers the discursive treatment of consumption and the configuration and modulation of idealised performance as articulated in domestic advice literature. Particular consideration is given to the new and often unprecedented attention paid to middle-class women purchasers and consumers of wine. While also drawing on wider wine literature, the article offers a case-study of the representation of wine in Good Housekeeping [hereafter GH] magazine. A prominent British monthly women's magazine aimed at a mainly middle-class readership, GH acts as a lens through which we might view attitudes towards, and experiences of, wine cultures. Increasing attention was paid to wine during the 1970s, chiefly within its content on cooking and entertaining. Above all, GH commentary centred on the promotion of moderate wine consumption within the context of stable, familial domesticity. As with much domestic advice and etiquette literature, GH's didactic commentary on cultivation and expression of taste and domestic authority not only facilitated participation in wine cultures but also embedded socio-cultural codes that could be deployed to judge both self and others.Footnote 19
This article's research methodolody focused on a detailed reading of all GH magazines from the 1970s, some 120 issues, with a database of wine-related content created. Advertisements were not included in this analysis. GH cookery books and entertaining manuals were also consulted, including the Good Housekeeping Book of Wine (1974). Regrettably, no GH company archive is open to the public, and there are no surviving records available about the magazine's editorial policy. Based on a US publication established in 1885, British GH was launched in 1922 and remained popular throughout the century. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the magazine shored up circulation through crafting more specialist output focused on home-making, thereby underlining differentiation from other women's magazines centred on themes including fashion.Footnote 20 GH magazine offered its middle-class, married readership content focused on family and home, underpinned by ideals of heteronormative respectability and consumer-oriented domesticity.Footnote 21 As such, the choice to develop extensive coverage of wine cultures during the 1970s pointed to their growing importance among middle-class British women at this time.
Women's magazines have been a useful source for historians. Whilst revealing little about how readers engaged with their content, they have, however, allowed historians to uncover evidence about family roles, affective relationships, body cultures and domestic discourses.Footnote 22 Although coverage of food has been explored, scholarly discussion of wine in women's magazines has been very limited.Footnote 23 In a 1997 study sociologist Alan Warde argued that these publications paid little attention to wine, save for brief mentions preoccupied with ‘expense, mystery and snobbery’.Footnote 24 This article contests such an interpretation, and a detailed study of GH shows that representations of wine were more extensive and diverse than has been acknowledged. Moreover, Warde's evidence derived from samples drawn from ten magazines across two twelve-month periods in 1967–8 and 1991–2.Footnote 25 As this article reveals, British wine cultures shifted hugely in the intervening years, and it is chiefly through a detailed survey of the 1970s via a focus on GH magazine and its associated publications, as well as a broader acknowledgment of wider trends in British wine writing, that a more nuanced mapping of the socio-cultural landscape of British wine emerges.Footnote 26
This article opens by showing the shift in wine consumption in 1970s Britain. Drawing on a variety of primary and secondary literature, it outlines new drinking, eating and leisure habits which impacted British consumption of and attitudes towards wine, particularly amongst the middle classes. The article then moves on to a focused study of all GH issues in the 1970s and other related literature. Aside from revealing the importance of gender as well as class in the development of new wine cultures in postwar Britain, the emergence of three themes (wine drinking on holiday; purchasing wine; serving wine) underlines the growing allure of the European continent in British habits and imagination.
Wine Consumption in 1970s Britain
By the advent of the 1970s, according to the seminal wine writer Jancis Robinson, Britons had begun to ‘lose our suspicion of this inherently foreign drink’.Footnote 27 Indeed, wine drinking in the United Kingdom had been developing slowly over the twentieth century.Footnote 28 The 1970s, however, saw a significant shift in wine drinking habits, practices and cultures. The emergent culture of wine drinking after the war both moulded and mirrored wider trends in leisure habits.Footnote 29 Building on entrenched practices of entertaining in affluent households, the proliferation of wine drinking in the home was constitutive of the expansion of more comfortable domestic cultures where recreation played a key role. This was facilitated by retail expansion, with the number of off-licences rising from 26,352 in 1965 to 42,646 in 1985.Footnote 30 Moreover, wine drinking also became an important facet of the expansion of eating out. While the fine dining fashion for haute cuisine from the late nineteenth century helped cultivate an emphasis on wine consumption and the appreciation of fine and vintage wines in particular, the (usually blended) wine on offer until the mid-twentieth century in primarily working-class venues like pubs was unlikely to be good quality.Footnote 31 Crucially, by the 1970s the growing demand for wine prompted both wider availability and the raising of standards, with new pub chains like Berni Inn keen to supply decent table wines.Footnote 32 Moreover, numerous brewers entered into arrangements with wine merchants, thus ensuring their premises saw a rise in the quality as well as the range of wine on sale.Footnote 33
As new habits were forming, so new drinking spaces were emerging. The increasing place of wine in pub cultures was linked to the growing emphasis on pub food that developed from the 1980s into a fundamental cornerstone of pub life by the end of the century.Footnote 34 Yet to be fully explored by historians (and beyond the scope of this article), the rise of wine bars in the late 1970s and 1980s, as successors to the Victorian wine lodge, was indicative of, and contributed to, the growing appeal of wine. With over 1,400 in business by 1986, the wine bar played a key role in broadening consumers’ experience of different varieties, as well as proliferating norms of wine drinking as both popularly accessible and constitutive of social cachet.Footnote 35
What were consumers drinking, exactly? Britain's entrenched and on-going reputation as a globally leading wine importer helped shape consumption patterns predicated on the availability of a broad range of light, sparkling and fortified wines. French wines were the most common, though the growing market for medium whites and specifically Liebfraumilch facilitated an expansion of German imports. Spanish and Italian wines were also popular, their comparative cheapness a key attraction for many suppliers and buyers alike. While by no means unknown, New World wines including from the Americas, Australasia and South Africa only rose to major prominence from the 1990s, overtaking European imports in the early 2000s.Footnote 36 Moreover, British (and usually English) wine making was small-scale and often unreliable before at least the 1990s.Footnote 37 Overwhelmingly, therefore, British consumers conceived of wine as a European commodity.Footnote 38
In addition to the development of new spaces and habits of non-domestic leisure, British wine cultures were indelibly shaped by changing retail spaces and practices. Wine merchants remained important, but the most noted development of the post-war era was the coming of supermarket licensing in the early 1960s, which opened up new consumer habits. Marks and Spencer, for example, began selling wine in 1973, beginning with eight wines and four sherries.Footnote 39 The end of retail price agreements in 1965 prompted a ‘flood of cut-price liquor’ which boosted wine sales significantly.Footnote 40 British duties were also reduced in the wake of EEC policies aimed at harmonising wine taxes across member states.Footnote 41 Together, these factors helped ensure affordable wines were widely available.
Continental cuisine and wine drinking proved highly popular in domestic settings. Building on entrenched practices of entertaining in affluent households, the proliferation of wine drinking in the home was constitutive of the expansion of more comfortable domestic cultures where recreation played a key role. Greater leisure time in the home shaped family life in new ways, including with the continued development of television. Enthusiasm for continental cookery in the home had been growing from the early 1950s, especially among the middle classes, who readily lapped up Elizabeth David's recipes.Footnote 42 For David and others, wine was not only the key continental drink to enjoy with food, but also an important addition in many recipes, epitomised, perhaps, by the fashionable coq au vin. Housewives were urged to make efficient use of their freezers in ensuring their households might be regularly supplied with continental-inspired cooking. In her volume of domestic advice, Shirley Conran maintained that time-pressured women, especially those shouldering the double burden of work and family, should stock their freezers with a goodly supply of home-made ‘blanquette de veau or coq au vin’ or ‘shop-bought gourmet frozen dishes such as canard a l'orange, ratatouille, boeuf bourguignon, fruit de mer – that sort of thing’.Footnote 43 1970s television reflected the new interest in continental cuisine, with the indomitable Fanny Cradock producing BBC features on Common Market cookery, while ‘Galloping Gourmet’ Graham Kerr delighted viewers with his enthusiasm for ‘slurps’ of wine, both in recipes and by the glass.Footnote 44 Recipes might sometimes be adapted for the British palate and doubtless some dishes served in both homes and restaurants would have been laughably unrecognisable in their native country, but for many consumers the turn towards continental cuisine was an appealing departure, helping reconfigure interest in Europe via an ambition to recreate if not authentic, then at least approximate, dishes and menus.Footnote 45 The new popularity of European cuisine added to, and was augmented by, the growing interest in wine. As GH observed in 1969: ‘in most Continental countries no meal is regarded as complete unless it is accompanied by an appropriate wine’.Footnote 46
Cultures of wine writing reflected these broader developments. In the early-to-mid twentieth century, connoisseurly guides enjoyed a niche if enthusiastic audience, their more limited circulation a reminder that habitual consumption was overwhelmingly limited to the middle and upper classes. The field was led by authoritative gastronome and oenophile André Simon, who published a prodigious number of guides.Footnote 47 A more inclusive culture of appreciation was promoted by Raymond Postgate. Founder of The Good Food Guide, Postgate maintained that high-quality cuisine should not be the preserve of the wealthy. Through books including The Plain Man's Guide to Wine (1951), Postgate aimed to demystify wine drinking, undercutting the elitism he considered a deterrent to many.Footnote 48 The rise in consumption from the mid-1960s was matched by a notable upswing in publications. Europe remained the dominant focus, with extensive attention paid to countries, regions and varieties.Footnote 49 Leading publishers like Penguin capitalised on wine's fashionable status.Footnote 50
Within this dynamic field of publishing, several expert authors rose to prominence. Pamela Vandyke Price was the first woman in Britain to write about wine for popular audiences: having first published in the 1950s, she became better known in the following decades thanks to several well-received guides and her role as The Times’ wine correspondent.Footnote 51 In addition to his numerous celebrated books, Hugh Johnson helped popularise wine maps. His pioneering 1971 wine atlas sharpened awareness of the geographies of viti-viniculture, as well as encouraging a broader cultural engagement with Europe among new wine enthusiasts.Footnote 52 Jancis Robinson's influence grew rapidly in the 1970s, rooted partly in a commitment to cutting away the worst excesses of connoisseurly pomposity in favour of a more inclusive and egalitarian appreciation of the enjoyment of wine, encapsulated in her 1979 The Wine Book: A Straightforward Guide to Better Buying and Drinking for Less Money.Footnote 53 Beyond the interest in authoritative yet accessible guides, publishers were keen to exploit the fashion trend of wine drinking, including with respect to the new market for women consumers. In 1973, for instance, Kenneth Mason launched a miniature-sized guide to Common Market Wines in a series of ‘handbag’-sized volumes that included volumes on cosmetics, calorie-counting and childcare. While its content was akin to more mainstream wine publishing, the connotations of its format were decidedly gendered.Footnote 54
The nature of the British supply market fostered a discursive preoccupation with wine as a ‘foreign’ commodity whose appeal was rooted in a cosmopolitan otherness, still culturally distinctive but now newly attainable. Publishers, retailers and advertisers all helped modulate wine's otherness so as to attain mass popularisation. Writers often articulated an idealised vision of European wines, focused on positive representations of opportunities for consumption which mostly ignored the political and economic faultlines that, as scholars including Andrew W. M. Smith have argued, could pose enormous challenges for viti-viniculture across local, regional, national and transnational practices and cultures.Footnote 55
Interestingly, authors typically bypassed mention of European geo-politics: regarding German wines, reference to the existence of East Germany was all but absent, discussion of Spanish and Portuguese wines did not acknowledge the existence or demise of their fascist governments and mention of communism was fleeting. Clarity was often lacking over EEC membership, while discussion of overproduction in respect of Common Agricultural Policy was framed as international political and economic news, despite the impact of cheap imports on British consumption.Footnote 56 There was a tendency to evoke idealised representations of wine production, coupled with an even greater preoccupation with the social esteem linked to consumption. This propensity was especially apparent in culinary and domestic advice literature.
If wine consumption was very much driven by new enthusiasm for the European continent and its cuisine (both real and imagined), it was – and was seen as – primarily a middle-class phenomenon. Though wine drinking was also rising among the working classes, the wealthy remained bonded to rituals of fine and vintage wine drinking meaning that, as Jancis Robinson has maintained, the major shift towards more regular habitual consumption of table wine happened among the middle classes. Crucially, new habits and rituals of buying and drinking wine constituted a new kind of distinctive ‘ordinariness’ in many middle-class households, especially among middle-aged, married couples. Wine drinking slotted into the kinds of gentrifying cultures identified by historian Joe Moran as being key to the socially mobile metropolitan middle classes.Footnote 57 In this way, the burgeoning ‘middlebrow’ wine cultures of 1970s Britain formed part of suite of practices, habits and lifestyles that intended to reject more rigid socio-cultural hierarchies that had influenced earlier generations especially with regards to class identities. New living styles rejected the formality of earlier middle-class generations in favour of more relaxed sociability, preferring more informal everyday practices including in relation to food and drink, patterns of sociability and entertaining and home design and decoration.
New Wine Cultures: A Case Study of Good Housekeeping Magazine
Britain's relationship to wine was changing in the 1970s, with new drinking spaces, habits and trends emerging, not least amongst the middle classes. A close study of Good Housekeeping in that decade reveals the extent to which middle-class women were involved in new wine cultures as both consumers and purchasers, and indicates the myriad socio-cultural transformations of those years.
From its launch in 1922 and in line with broader attitudes and expectations within affluent, middle-class domestic consumer cultures, Good Housekeeping (GH) had encouraged moderate wine consumption, typically in the context of festive and celebratory dining and entertaining. A 1925 cookery book, for instance, contained recipes for simple cocktails such as ‘claret cup’ with citrus fruits and cucumber, along with white wine savoury sauce.Footnote 58 Attention to wine grew after the war: in 1949 André Simon contributed a chapter focused on food and wine pairings to a GH recipe book, while a 1955 manual on entertaining included advice on wine pairings, as well as advice for serving wine on key occasions including a christening, twenty-first birthday and at a wedding.Footnote 59 By the 1960s wine began to feature more frequently. A 1964 GH supplement on ‘Cooking With Wine’ noted the advantages of wine in adding depth and favour to dishes. The influence of European holidays was underlined, with readers encouraged to join the ranks of those inspired by family vacations who were now ‘enjoy[ing] foreign cookery and want[ing] to reproduce some of the dishes at home – with all that involves in the way of using garlic, herbs and wine!’Footnote 60 Advice on serving wine as part of family occasions and entertaining friends in the home grew in volume and frequency. The December 1965 magazine included commentary on pairing seasonal dishes and wines, for instance. French burgundy and claret were recommended, with readers encouraged to spend ‘a shilling or two extra in the range you're accustomed to’.Footnote 61 GH promoted experimentation with wine, with the idea gaining traction that wine drinking should be part of family meals and more everyday dining, as well as occasional entertaining.
The launch of GH's wine column in January 1968 was a pivotal juncture. The editorial team asserted they had ‘long felt there was a gap in GH when it came to useful information about wine’.Footnote 62 Notably, the magazine secured column contributions from numerous illustrious wine writers, underlining GH's culinary standing, as well as its ambitions to accrue an authoritative reputation. Reflecting developments in wine writing more broadly, columns were written by both male and female authors.Footnote 63 Throughout the 1970s the column focused on the twin aims of encouraging experimentation and enhancing appreciation, with particular themes given repeated coverage over the years, espeically variety, place of origin and guidance on buying and serving. Consideration of wine varieties was predictably prominent, with features on claret appearing in March 1970, sherry in May 1972 and rioja in March 1979, for example.Footnote 64 Coverage of specific wine regions included a column on the Loire in September 1970, Burgundy in March 1972 and the Midi in April 1979.Footnote 65 Articles discussing a particular country included coverage of Italy in August 1970, France in April 1974 and Germany in September 1975, for instance.Footnote 66 Columns on buying wine were published in January 1970 and January 1979.Footnote 67 Content on food and wine pairings, including for parties, appeared in June 1971 and February 1979.Footnote 68
A striking feature of GH's columns – and indeed wine writing more broadly at this time – was the recapitulation of key themes. The 1974 Good Housekeeping Book of Wine retraced much of the content featured in monthly issues, for instance, with one chapter devoted to shopping for wine. It ran through the merits and drawbacks of different retail options, including the expert advice on offer from a well-established wine merchant, or the bargain everyday tipples to be found in supermarkets.Footnote 69 It could be argued that repetition was deemed constitutive of reader confidence in a period of dynamic change. Undoubtedly, anxieties could arise around the display of appropriate understanding of wine and fears of social awkwardness, or, worse still, public shaming. As Jane Deverson and Katherine Lindsay discovered in their 1975 social survey of Voices from the Middle Class, while many of the middle-class surburban-dwellers they interviewed ‘claimed to have shaken off a rigid and strict upbringing . . . they had no wish to step outside the bounds of acceptable middle-class behaviour’.Footnote 70 In negotiating these developments GH trod a middle path which both contributed to, and also contested, concerns about etiquette and social prestige, emphasising socio-cultural preferences, but ultimately promoting consumption as its key aim. While this article focuses on GH content, inevitably readers would also have been influenced by the wine advertisements which sometimes featured in the magazine. Branded wine adverts were most common, promoting aspirational consumption via an evocation of continental sophistication and, oftentimes, an appeal to feminine domesticity. Adverts for Mateus Rosé, the sweet frizzante which became a household name such was its mass popularity, proclaimed it to be ‘the perfect accompaniment to dining out and eating in’, and generally ‘enchanting’.Footnote 71
That a mainstream women's magazine such as GH developed such a focus on wine was significant. The serving of wine in relation to domestic dining was often linked to women, and especially housewives, as well as female servants, especially in the period up to the Second World War. However, until at least the early 1950s the buying and, especially, the appreciation of fine wine, was typically conceptualised as masculine practice: indeed, elite wine tastings were very much male-dominated.Footnote 72 GH did not articulate an overtly feminist challenge to gendered norms: its framing of wine cultures within domestic discourses promoting women's roles as housewives and hostesses was sharply at odds with the Women's Liberation politics of this period which contested entrenched ideals of women's overwhelmingly white, heteronormative family and home-based roles.Footnote 73 Nevertheless, the magazine's commitment to promoting positive narratives of women's engagement with wine culture was striking, especially its foregrounding of female authority. In etiquette manuals up to the late 1950s, there was some emphasis on masculine prerogative in choosing wines both for home drinking and in venues like restaurants.Footnote 74 Especially for major occasions, GH sometimes encouraged readers to choose wine with their husbands, promoting joint decision making in the context of companionate marriage, although this had fallen away even by the late 1960s.Footnote 75 Interestingly, GH's positive representations of women and wine extended to features on women wine writers and tasters: a June 1979 feature on ‘Women in the Wine World’ foregrounded the achievements of key figures including Jancis Robinson in forging acknowledgement of women's authority in relation to wine.Footnote 76
In exploring GH's constructive discourses, attention now turns to three key themes: wine drinking on holiday, the purchase of wine and the serving of wine. These issues featured regularly in the magazine across the period, with discussion framed by particular engagement with representations of continental cultures as a key aspect of wine's growing appeal for the British middle classes.
The growth of European tourism featured prominently in GH throughout the 1970s, with coverage reflecting the fashion for all-inclusive package holidays, as well as self-catering camping and touring vacations. As Miriam Akhtar and Steve Humphries have noted, ‘returning holidaymakers wanted to bring back “the good life”, and so it followed that French bistros and Italian trattorias and pizzerias became more popular in Britain’.Footnote 77 GH content invoked an aspirational culture of consumption, as well as meeting burgeoning demand for practical advice. Contrasting with historically entrenched (and often decidedly stereotypical) critiques of ‘foreign food’, and poor quality tea making in particular, GH championed the sampling of local cuisine as a means of experiencing authentic continental culture and thereby accruing social distinction.Footnote 78 As an article of January 1970 asked, ‘when you go abroad do you want a large hotel with all mod cons and menus planned with the English in mind, or do you like those small hotels with local cooking and plenty of atmosphere?’Footnote 79 Many articles on holiday dining welcomed wine drinking as standard, low cost vin ordinaire being much applauded. The use of simple jugs and tumblers was welcomed as symbolic of continental authenticity, contrasting with the more elaborate material culture of very formal dining where fine glassware was de rigueur. In January 1971 Robin Abney wrote approvingly of the ‘absurdly cheap’ jugs of wine he purchased in Italy to accompany local fresh fish and the ‘inevitable mountains of pasta, served with highly-spiced garlic sauces’.Footnote 80 Readers were encouraged to try local wines not widely known in Britain. Describing a trip to the island of Hvar in Dalmatia, Roger Smithells noted that in the small town of Jelsa readers might seek out ‘its own particular white wine Bogdanjcisa, if you can pronounce it’.Footnote 81 GH contended that authentic experiences of experimenting with local varieties could also enhance discernment: reviewing a holiday on Elba, Sebastian Cash noted that ‘Aleatico, the local wine, is passable, but Moscato, a dessert wine, has real quality’.Footnote 82 This kind of commentary underlined the importance of lived experience in coming to know and appreciate wine.
GH also noted the growing habit of bringing home souvenir bottles. Low cost was one appeal, but the material culture of wine souvenirs could be underpinned by particular emotional resonance. A bottle taken home and kept after its contents were consumed might operate not only as an evocative reminder of an enjoyable holiday, but also held certain significance as an object whose display in the home for both self and others invoked an appeal to, and performance of, social distinction. Arguably the pièce de résistance was a straw-covered fiasco bottle, much prized owing to the do-it-yourself fashion for turning these into candle-holders and lampshades, echoing styles seen (or imagined) in Italian restaurants.Footnote 83 The appeal to authenticity was key here: even though an identical one might be available on shelves in Britain, the fact that a bottle had been bought abroad appealed to the sense of knowledge of, and participation in, authentic continental wine cultures.
An illuminating appeal to authenticity underpinned GH's commentary on visiting vineyards in its coverage of holidays. In an article of April 1971, Gabor Denes emphasised that ‘vineyard visits and the hospitality that goes with them does not depend on privilege. Many of the finest wine châteaux and estates of Europe are open to anyone interested.’ Visits were promoted as informative and enjoyable: ‘every visit brings new knowledge, new tastes and, most emphatically, new friends’. Denes's encouragement to readers to obtain a letter of introduction from their wine merchant to ensure ‘a red-carpet reception’ revealed an assumption that those serious enough about wine to visit a vineyard would be serious enough to buy their supplies from a dedicated expert, rather than take the self-service supermarket option. Interestingly, however, Denes also reassured readers that most vineyards would also welcome impromptu visitors.Footnote 84 Furthermore, elsewhere GH acknowledged that a trip to a vineyard might be unappealing to many, noting grapes were, ‘after all, only another agricultural crop’. For others, though, the rewards could be irresistible: ‘to a wine lover the sight of a well-kept vineyard is beautiful and exciting’.Footnote 85 As far as GH was concerned, such attraction was rooted partly in the continental otherness of the vineyard.
Readers were even encouraged to try a wine holiday. With wine tourism still in its relative infancy, GH's coverage focused mainly on France, Germany and Italy. Numerous articles welcomed opportunities for more immersive experiences of particular wine regions and their viti-vinicultural traditions. In April 1972 GH editor Charlotte Lessing wrote about a wine holiday in Portugal. While noting that to reap ‘full enjoyment from a holiday like this’ readers should be food and wine enthusiasts, Lessing encouraged readers not to see the wine vacation as solely for the learned gastronome. She advocated harvest as the best time for an authentic experience: ‘this is the time to go and see and taste; to hear the singing and see the local dancing. This will get you off to a very good start for the better understanding of port.’Footnote 86 Like GH's wine coverage more widely, Lessing's article adopted a middling position. She reflected positively on a visit to the vineyard of Mateus Rosé, where the scale of operations spoke to the firm's winning combination of ‘old-world manners’ and up-to-date ‘marketing methods’ to create a slick tourist experience. Lessing also discussed trips to small vineyards producing vinho verde, then a lesser known variety in Britain. In doing so, she emphasised both the value of experimentation and the esteem to be gained from serving unknown wines while entertaining.Footnote 87
Overall, GH encouraged wine drinking as an enjoyable holiday experience, but more significantly, regarded opportunities to sample wines in their place of origin as constitutive of social and cultural esteem. GH tended to promote a particular kind of imagined authenticity where the process of agricultural production, while not wholly ignored, was much downplayed in favour of an emphasis on the esteem attached to visiting vineyards, their continental otherness emblematic of the broader appeal of holidays in Europe at this time. As Tony Lord, editor of The Decanter, put it in April 1977, for ‘the wine drinker and wine lover who wants to combine a little education, a little tasting, a lot of fun and relaxation’, the wine holiday was an ideal choice.Footnote 88 The lived experiences of holiday makers helped to reconfigure British wine cultures and consumption practices in this period, with the replication of vacation experiences (or even simply an imagined version of them) also helping to mould retail practices at home.
GH's focus on wine consumption at home was expansive, encouraging the adoption of more everyday practices of moderate drinking, and offering extensive didactic advice on how to buy and serve wine as part of its wider promotion of culinary accomplishment. Commentary on purchasing wines emphasised the very wide range on offer in Britain, with readers reminded that they could choose from a broader selection than was available in European countries.Footnote 89 Interestingly in the late 1960s there was some hesitancy over recommending particular wines, with GH instructing readers to write directly to its Hostess Editor for leaflets giving specific suggestions.Footnote 90 Across the 1970s, however, GH aligned itself more overtly with the ethos of consumer advocacy then becoming prominent both among wine writers and more generally. Significantly, GH presented its advice in the same register used for other consumer-related content, thereby inculcating confidence that readers would be able to navigate wine purchasing with the skills they deployed in their other shopping to ensure the acquisition of good quality, value for money goods. With declining reference to the role of husbands in choosing wine, GH positioned itself as an ample source for any advice readers might need across a range of retail settings. The 1974 Book of Wine argued it was ‘strange’ that anyone remained convinced that wine was a ‘man's world’: ‘wine is increasingly bought by women who in fact buy more than men. It is, therefore, only sensible if women know something about a commodity on which they are spending their money.’Footnote 91
Inevitably questions about what to buy were framed in relation to the thorny question of personal taste. As was common in many wine guides, GH maintained that readers must always be guided by individual preference, but at the same time emphasised the value of cultivating finer appreciation of wine through experience. While confident purchasing of one's own wine for different occasions would ‘require knowledge of the different types of wine’, theoretical knowledge of ‘tradition and convention’ would likely not trump understanding gleaned through individual experience.Footnote 92 This freighted position – you choose, but be sure to choose well – would for some arguably increase, rather than diminish, anxiety. Indeed, domestic advice literature more broadly had long had the effect of generating disquiet about the proper cultivation and display of refinement.Footnote 93 How would a reader know if her palate was sophisticated enough to ensure she bought the ‘right’ kind of wine? While some might have been assured in acquiring knowledge via GH about how to serve wine, the issue of how to buy the best wine for a particular occasion was more fraught, including of course because palates varied between individuals. The most obvious steer GH gave was an indication that the more sophisticated palate preferred drier wines to sweet varieties, thus mirroring and contributing to broader discussion on this theme in British wine writing in the 1970s.Footnote 94 Readers were given reassurance that there was ‘nothing to be ashamed of’ in liking sweet wines, but there was also a clear message that ‘many of us grow to like drier wines’.Footnote 95 Crucially, experimentation was seen as the key to countering the risk of ‘spend[ing] the rest of your drinking life restricted to perhaps three or four different wines, and possibly liv[ing] in ignorance of the many other kinds’.Footnote 96
In its guidance on where to buy, GH emphasised a preference for purchasing from wine merchants, not least because typically they offered samples.Footnote 97 Trying before buying was promoted as the savvy way to shop, being less risky than a gamble on an untried bottle. GH encouraged readers to build a relationship with their local merchant in order to reap maximum benefit from the latter's expertise, including ‘not only what to buy . . . but also how money can be wisely spent’.Footnote 98 Shoppers were encouraged to supply wine merchants with exact details of the occasion for which wine was being purchased, the food to be served and the available budget, noting, ‘all these points are of interest to the man behind the counter’ who would take ‘personal pride’ in recommending a bottle, however ‘modest’, that would ‘bring you back for more and so encourage you to become a regular customer’.Footnote 99 Once experience had been built up, Vandyke Price urged more confident consumers to seek recommendations for wines ‘not yet widely known’, thus emphasising to readers a means of further leveraging coveted social distinction.Footnote 100
For GH, buying from merchants was typically regarded as preferable to purchasing from supermarkets, especially when shopping for something more special than an everyday wine. The magazine's position on supermarkets was noticeably lukewarm, even in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, despite the huge growth in this sector of off-licence sales underpinned to a large extent by competitive pricing. This placed the magazine somewhat at odds with the broader emphasis on the appeal of supermarket wine shopping which had become widespread even by the mid-1970s, thanks to the convenience of self-service and low pricing.Footnote 101 Several major chains developed particular interests in wine, launching own-label brands and using their size to broker deals on a scale hitherto unknown which ensured mass consistency. Sainsbury's was the market leader, with the Co-Op and Tesco also performing well.Footnote 102
Despite, or indeed because of, these consumer oriented developments, GH was ambivalent towards supermarkets. Robin Young lamented that supermarkets offered ‘little in the way of personal advice and service’ and regretted that the imperatives placed on buying up ‘huge quantities’ of commercially acceptable wine to stock chains uniformly had an overall effect of driving down quality. He considered that patronising supermarkets diminished the act of wine buying, rendering it a prosaic purchase on a par with ‘baked beans and toilet rolls’.Footnote 103 Supermarkets were deemed most useful for bulk purchases for parties and large-scale entertaining. In December 1970 GH Hostess Editor Margaret Sherman urged readers to save money by shopping at supermarkets for ‘trusted brands of fortified wines’. She went on: ‘table wines, especially the rather more expensive, I prefer to order from the traditional wine merchant who treats them with proper respect and, of course, will deliver as and when wanted’.Footnote 104 The 1974 GH wine manual conceded that the supermarket was ‘the place to shop for inexpensive, everyday wine’ but little more. Beyond this, GH often directed readers to other retailers, warning of the perils of ‘buy[ing] on the label’.Footnote 105 One such risk was of manufactured authenticity: GH warned its readers to beware the ‘stridently-labelled bottle, of many colours . . . bearing a number of different lettering styles and obviously invented historic pictures and legends’. Such a label would likely ‘be trying to make up for the uncertain quality of its contents’.Footnote 106 Doubtless some readers did patronise supermarkets exclusively, but the magazine's emphasis on wine buying as best suited to more specialist (and typically more expensive) retailing was striking for its prioritising of social status.
Other retailers were also discussed by GH. Although not rated as highly as independent merchants, high street off-licence chains were commended for their general advice and consumer advocacy. Good value was also appreciated: a 1970 column on Spanish wines, for instance, noted that chains Victoria Wine, Peter Dominic and Threshers had all ‘gone to a lot of trouble’ to source wines ‘just right for British tastes’. Certainly a visit to an off-licence chain (or indeed a supermarket) was seen as preferable to a panicked dash to a corner shop, whose forlorn offering was usually limited to a few dusty bottles at extortionate prices.Footnote 107 As with all other shopping, the GH reader was encouraged to plan her wine purchases with some care. This in turn links to much broader consumer practices and cultures in the post-war era, with mindful buying linked to cultivation and performance of social status through efficient purchasing and consumer understanding.
Crucially, GH facilitated wine shopping through its Shopping Club, a mail order enterprise offering readers good value deals on a wide range of domestic goods. Wine clubs were becoming more common from the 1970s, with The Sunday Times’ club especially prominent thanks to the high profile of its president, author Hugh Johnson.Footnote 108 GH's club signalled an intervention to help readers navigate the sometimes tricky process of wine buying, coupled with a reinscribing of its domestic authority. In most cases, all readers had to do was choose from a very limited range of options, usually either a mixed case or a dozen of one variety chosen from a short list. Club offers typically focused on collections from a single country, with France and Germany predominant: the French offer of June 1970, for example, featured Châteauneuf-du-pape (1967), Loire Muscadet, Alsace Sylvaner, Beaujolais Moulin-à-Vent (1967), Pouilly-Fuissé (1968) and Clarets Margaux.Footnote 109 Regional collections were also common, while summer and Christmas offers capitalised on periods when consumption increased, with advertising emphasising ease as well as enjoyment for the customer.Footnote 110 The magazine ran tastings in conjunction with many offers, as was the case in 1970 when GH collaborated with Stowells of Chelsea to offer tutored sampling led by a Master of Wine. As well as promoting the offer – ‘we think they're simply delicious, but you don't have to take out word for it’ – tastings served a broader purpose in normalising consumption, with attendees expected to drink the samples.Footnote 111 While, regrettably, statistics on sales are not available, it can be seen that GH's foray into wine sales was predicated on an assertion of domestic authority, with consumer confidence bolstered by the magazine's arbitrating influence in dealing with matters of good taste. Its wine club represented a striking example of the modulation of continental otherness which created a commercially appealing cultural equilibrium, diminishing the discomfort of the unknown while maintaining the mystique of European sophistication.
While most GH commentary on purchasing wine was for home consumption, it is notable that buying wine in licensed venues was also addressed, with particular focus given to restaurant dining. Wine lists were acknowledged as provoking anxiety among some diners. Readers were encouraged to ‘know a little about the subject, to be firm about what you have to spend and to have formed ideas about what you like’. Presumably this was a tall order for some, but GH reassured readers that those who took its advice seriously would ‘know at least as much if not much more than the average wine waiter’.Footnote 112 Readers were encouraged to be confident discussing orders with wine waiters: ‘after all, you've been reading about wine . . . and you should be able to remember some of the recommendations’.Footnote 113 Readers were also enjoined not to be discouraged by more traditional gendered expectations that wine would be chosen by men. The 1974 wine manual noted that ‘in many wine regions there is nothing remarkable about the woman giving the orders for the wines as well as the food in a restaurant’.Footnote 114 While attitudes towards gendered family roles were by no means uniformly progressive or socially liberal at this time, British women were encouraged, and indeed expected, to exercise domestic authority also in the sphere of wine consumption.
Recommendations for serving wine were a major preoccupation for GH and were published as part of the culinary content which formed a major strand within each issue. Consumption was overwhelmingly conceptualised within frameworks of commensality and hospitality, with social occasions like dinner parties the primary settings at which hostesses (and indeed guests) might display their understanding and appreciation. Moving on from early to mid- century norms, wine was included in a wide variety of menu suggestions. Contrasting with earlier culinary traditions which linked wine drinking with luxury, GH promoted consumption in less formal contexts, both reflecting and contributing to wine's wider popularisation.
The often vexed issue of food and wine pairings was addressed frequently. Very well-established norms advocating the chilling of whites and the avoidance of reds with more delicate flavours like fish were mentioned regularly. The 1974 Book of Wine laid particular emphasis on the theme, maintaining that ‘the overall piece of advice which is likely to be of use is that wine should either complement or contrast with the dish’.Footnote 115 The relative importance of rules was also addressed: while those with ‘some experience of wine’ might be found breaking traditional rules about pairing, such practice risked ‘spoiling the enjoyment of your guests’. In underlining the imperatives of politeness towards guests, GH again signalled the social distinction to be accrued from acting as a good host. In order to help readers navigate matching dishes and wines, the 1974 manual featured a two-page table on the ‘simple conventional partnership of wine and food’. Categories included ‘fine wine’, ‘medium quality’, ‘everyday, inexpensive wine’ and ‘any kind’, with suitable matches listed for a range of food types and courses including soups, fish, meat, poultry, cheese and desserts. Whites sub-divided as dry full-bodied, dry light-bodied and sweet, while reds were listed as full-bodied, light-bodied and sweet.Footnote 116 A few pages on, however, came the proviso that while ‘many people try to be very particular in choosing wines with foods’, in refusing to recognise that ‘wines themselves vary so much’ it was ‘risky to lay down hard and fast rules as to what goes with what’. Thus, for the nervous and inexperienced, the stakes might still have been higher that they would have liked. Crucially, GH maintained that readers could and should grow to trust their own personal preferences, especially once they had more experience of wine drinking. ‘Be reassured’, the manual encouraged, ‘if you follow certain basic, sensible rules . . . as your experience grows you can start to experiment and eventually you will choose wine with complete reassurance. . . . Try always to look on the choice of wine with food as a something fascinating and enjoyable rather than a difficult problem.’Footnote 117
Rather than simply publishing lists of specific wines to buy to accompany particular dishes, GH aimed not only to educate but also to empower its readers, a trend that spoke to its engagement with the wider emphasis on women's engagement with wine cultures in this period. For GH endless reliance on rules was a barrier to experimentation, which in turn might impede familiarity and, therefore, confidence with wine. Strict deference to vintage charts was deemed unnecessary for the GH housewife, for instance.Footnote 118
Readers were encouraged to remember that consumers in wine producing countries chose their wine ‘entirely according to what they feel like drinking’, a fact which in turn rendered ‘much of our particularisation about what should go with what [as] rather unnecessary’.Footnote 119 Once again, the appeal to emulate European habits was underpinned by an invocation of authentic familiarity. It was perhaps a relief to some readers that cooking with wine was a more straightforward affair. In its discussion of continental recipes, GH was consistent in its advice to use only inexpensive wine: as a 1970 entertaining manual put it, ‘almost anything will do’.Footnote 120 Moreover, readers were reassured there was no need to match wine and dish by country of origin: ‘you can do a stew, such as coq au vin, which is essentially a Burgundian recipe, and make use of a little claret, Spanish or other red wine if this is what you happen to have’.Footnote 121 For GH at least, excessive fastidiousness when cooking with wine went counter to the central imperative of simply enjoying the pleasures of wine.Footnote 122
Wine suggestions became more common (though not ubiquitous) alongside recipes for everyday dining, including meals for families and couples at weekends: in October 1970 a recipe for a ‘chicken bake’ was accompanied by recommendations for ‘a good mellow hock’, for instance.Footnote 123 Wine recommendations primarily formed part of menus for special family weekend meals and festive occasions, as well as dinner parties and other entertaining. Predictably, wine was a prominent element of Eurocentric menus. Reflecting their popularity, GH published regular dinner party menus. In March 1971 Vandyke Price declaimed the virtues of serving ‘good burgundy’ with classic French dishes such as coq au vin.Footnote 124 Here, gustatory experimentation was privileged as a display of distinction.
The price of wine was entangled in these discussions. The magazine tackled the etiquette of giving and receiving gifts of wine at dinner parties, with particular emphasis on the need to avoid embarrassing guests with regards to cost or placing the inexperienced under pressure. In a menu suggestion for a pasta meal for twelve featuring ‘traditional long spaghetti and fancy pasta shapes’, GH advised the hostess to graciously discourage guests from excessive and possibly competitive spending, adding she should ‘specify gently that it's to be wine of honest plonk style and price’.Footnote 125 Interestingly, consuming table wine rather than, say, a rarer vintage bottle, would align the meal more closely with everyday continental culinary habits, thereby corroborating notions of authentic commensality.
Predictably, menus for special occasions, and especially Christmas, made greater allowance for finer wines, though there was always an overriding emphasis on affordability and accessibility. Interestingly, the GH Wine Club was promoted as offering simple solutions for readers. The December 1970 issue contended that ‘Christmas dinner deserves a well-chosen wine partnership to do justice to the cook's endeavours’. While noting that ‘look[ing] around and try[ing] half a bottle of this or that’ was a ‘pleasant way to educate the taste buds’, GH's wine club advert extolled: ‘we do that sort of thing all the year round, assessing on your behalf. That's how we chose the wines for our special offer.’Footnote 126
GH offered extensive commentary on serving wine at drinks parties. Building on early to mid- century cultures of cocktail and sherry parties, by the 1970s drinks parties had spread across a wider social spectrum, with GH recommending their suitability for the less experienced hostess since they avoided more elaborate food preparation and cooking. Particular praise was reserved for the continental themed party, where a buffet of snacks, such as paté, from a particular country might be matched with local wines.Footnote 127 Perhaps most fashionable was the wine and cheese party, deemed a sophisticated occasion which would allow the hostess to display her wine knowledge, especially if she followed GH's advice to pair produce according to region and country.Footnote 128 Single drink events were popular, with sherry and madeira both recommended, as well as themed evenings focussed on, say, wines from a particular holiday region.Footnote 129 A 1970 GH entertaining manual maintained that for a wine and cheese party for fifty guests, the hostess should offer two whites to go with creamy cheeses possibly a ‘Bordeaux, like Mouton Cadet Blanc, and Liebfraumilch-Kellergergeist’ and two reds, perhaps ‘Portuguese Sao Pedro Dao Tinto, Italian Valpolicella or Bardolino’ to pair with an English selection and some continental blues.Footnote 130 Seasonal drinks parties were also recommended, including summer events with refreshing mixers such as ‘Kalte Ente or “cold duck”’, a German white wine cup.Footnote 131 Suggestions for Christmas and New Year drinks parties also often featured mixers such as glühwein and vin chaud.Footnote 132 Always attendant to value for money, the magazine argued that when hosting large numbers, hostesses should not be afraid to serve less costly wines, especially for mixers purchased from supermarkets and cut-price retailers.
As GH affirmed in 1974, wine parties were ‘a fairly recent but very popular form of entertainment’.Footnote 133 They not only played a key role in the popularisation of wine consumption, but held particular significance as occasions for the cultivation and expression of social esteem. Whether hosting an intimate gathering or a much larger event, when running a successful wine party, the ideal GH reader could position herself as a confident and relaxed hostess, sufficiently knowledgeable to be confident her guests would enjoy the wines she served, while remaining unencumbered by the stuffiness of elitist wine snobbery.
Conclusion
During the 1970s wine came to occupy an increasingly important place in the recreational life of the British middle classes. Earlier preoccupations with wine as a luxury good were declining, and wine's greater affordability and availability generated popular appeal across growing sections of the middle class. GH magazine played a notable role in this transmission and popularisation of wine cultures. Echoing many of the popularising themes found in wider British wine literature at this time, GH’s discourse of informed appreciation also helped broker consumer confidence while eschewing the pretentiousness it associated with elite connoisseurship. As a 1970 entertaining manual contended ‘wine's a fascinating subject, and a little knowledge is well worth accruing, so long as it doesn't become the little learning that's a dangerous thing. There's nothing more dreary than the wine snob.’Footnote 134
In illuminating these shifts, this article has problematised Warde's framing of wine in this period as a ‘symbol . . . of extravagance’.Footnote 135 Nonetheless, there were certainly paradoxes and tensions in GH's coverage of how to drink, buy and serve wine. Alongside a rejection of older traditions of elite authority and expertise, there remained a clear emphasis on wine drinking as a culture really best suited to affluent, educated and well travelled Europhiles. On the one hand GH offered education and advice for its readers, but at the same time encouraged them to feel empowered enough to trust their own judgement. These kinds of contrasting and even conflicting discourses spoke to the reconfiguration of wine's role, as well as much broader political, social and cultural developments in a decade when Britain was renegotiating its place in Europe and class cultures were being reconfigured in new patterns.
So for all of its transformations, wine in the 1970s continued to be a positional good, and aspirational consumption remained a key influence. Exploration of GH content revealed didactic preoccupations with idealised performance, rather than the lived realities of readers’ experiences with wine. Evidence from social surveys of middle-class family life in the 1970s reveals (perhaps unsurprisingly) that hosting dinner parties and drinks parties could be more exasperating and exhausting than rewarding. One woman in her thirties interviewed on her view about class cultures in London suburbia despaired of the competitiveness that overshadowed entertaining in the home: ‘all those awful dinner parties! It's never people talking to people as such; it's married couples showing off their homes and general lifestyle to each other. The food seems to get more and more elaborate and everyone pretends not to notice it; it's just passed over to show that we're all accustomed to avocado pears and brandy although we dine on minced meat and Nescafé at home: it's all so bloody false.’Footnote 136 Endless reciprocal invitations – the ‘demanding ping-pong match of obligations and expectations’ – might be a particular burden for less confident housewives, while the pressures of entertaining neighbours, colleagues and (especially) bosses might rattle even the experienced hostess.Footnote 137 The emotional demands of successful entertaining might also be especially costly for the socially mobile, whose solidly working-class parents had seldom if ever drunk wine, but who were now newly thrust into a world where buying, drinking and – most of all – appreciating wine was to be expected.Footnote 138
Crucially, for both old and new consumers alike, wine was a notable positional good whose appreciation cultivated social cachet via its distinctive but still ordinary status; alongside this, the socio-cultural meanings and practices attached to wine were being reconfigured. The close study of GH magazine revealed in particular the reframing of gendered wine cultures during the 1970s. GH made a notable contribution in encouraging exploration and experimentation among women consumers within the context of comfortable, middle-class domesticity. Echoing broader wine writing, GH helped to foster a culture which promoted women as serious consumers of wine. This was linked not only to their key role as food shoppers, but also in terms of their potential ability to appreciate good wine, meaning there was ‘no reason at all’ men should be habitually privileged over women when it came to choosing wine.Footnote 139
Crucially, recurring discussions around holidays, purchasing and serving wine underlined the ways in which wine drew the continent closer to Britain, not least into their homes. GH's emphasis on wine's Europeanness was significant, underpinned by both an ideal of continental urbane sophistication and an appeal towards (imagined) cultural authenticity. The discourse around European habits, customs and tastes prevailed, and in doing so GH steered European products into the everyday lives and homes of the middle classes. It is perhaps not so surprising that, as Britain became more politically tied to Europe in the 1970s, wine also acted as a socio-cultural bridge.
The growth and democratisation of British wine consumption continued into the 1980s and well beyond. While this article has focussed on middle-class practices, it is clear that working-class experiences of wine were also shifting in the latter decades of the century. In part this reflected the growing experience of wine drinking on European holidays, with cheap travel and package holidays ensuring a new generation of travellers had first-hand experiences of continental cuisine. While these developments merit much more scholarly attention, it is arguable that the popularisation of wine drinking among the British working classes was rooted much more in the enjoyment of wine as a drink and in popular experiences of leisure and recreation at home and abroad, than it was the social emulation of middle-class practices.Footnote 140
By the late 1980s wine was hailed in popular opinion polls as ‘the most fashionable drink in the UK’.Footnote 141 The growth of new wine drinking cultures, including in wine bars, helped to cement its status. The ever expanding availability and affordability of wines, especially in supermarkets, helped to consolidate wine's place in working-class popular culture at home in Britain. Branded wines were important during the 1980s, their affordability a major draw. By the mid-1980s they accounted for around 15 per cent of the market, the most popular being Le Piat d'Or, a French-sounding wine created specifically for the British market. Liebfraumilch was also very popular, with key brands like Blue Nun becoming household names.Footnote 142 For some consumers, knowing what a wine would taste like still outweighed the potential appeal of experimenting with new varieties.
When New World wines stormed the British market in the late 1980s and 1990s wine drinkers were quick to engage with appealing and affordable varieties from across the world, including from Australia, New Zealand, California and Chile.Footnote 143 With Europe no longer the core focus, wine writers led consumers towards reimagining wine as a global commodity. GH moved with the times, keen to encourage drinkers to try new tastes, but always retaining its core emphasis on wine drinking as an emblem of social esteem.Footnote 144 Interestingly, despite over half a century of popular wine culture in Britain, wine writers continue to expound on some of the didactic themes familiar from the 1970s, including the tediousness of wine snobbery and an encouragement towards trusting one's own judgement in matters of taste and appreciation – perhaps revealing a certain preoccupation with wine's social and cultural complexity.Footnote 145 While numerous facets of 1970s wine culture, like the popularity of Mateus Rosé and wine and cheese parties, came to be mocked in later decades as the epitome of ersatz sophistication and later still as uncool kitsch, their historical interrogation helps uncover the social and cultural meanings attached to wine and reveals the broader impact of its popularisation in Britain, as well as illuminating a facet of Britain's relationship with, and position in, Europe.Footnote 146
Acknowledgments
Sincerest thanks to Kate Ferris, Ludivine Broch, Victoria Leonard, Andrew Jotischky and the three anonymous CEH reviewers for their very generous discussion and support.
