The voices of fine wine

On gentlemen, mermaids and political agency

We all know that wine is a drink made from fermented grapes. It’s an agricultural product made by farmers. Yet the mythologies around it are so compelling that we imbue it with greater value than that. There are so many myths to disentangle. For instance, that fine wine is for men, while women prefer to drink Prosecco and rosé. And following on from that, because fine wine is for men, it is inherently the more intellectual drink of choice. A gentleman’s drink. The sort that brings men of high standing together in gleaming dining rooms, facilitating lively discussion on the affairs of the day. It’s a drink of power and influence. 

This week, the Garrick Club – one of London’s last remaining men-only gentlemen’s clubs – finally voted in favour of allowing women to be admitted. This is one of London’s oldest clubs, almost 200 years old. Again and again, it has voted against allowing women in – with previous applications from women, including Joanna Lumley’s, being trashed with expletives. “Women aren’t allowed here and never will be,” one gentleman reportedly wrote. 

So what changed? Earlier this year, The Guardian published a list of its high-profile members. Men of serious influence from across the arts and politics. Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Benedict Cumberbatch. King Charles, our “progressive” monarch. These gentlemen were so embarrassed to be named and shamed that they finally spoke out. All well and good, then, when it’s hushed away behind closed doors, but once you’re outed for your complicity in an archaic, anti-women agenda, suddenly you’re speaking up for gender equality loudly and proudly. As if you had nothing to do with the whole thing.

Why does it matter, anyway? One could argue that there are other places for women to go; I would never want to be a member of such an establishment. But it does matter, because these are the places where conversations happen. The sort of casual, wine-lubricated chat over which relationships are cemented. The bants. “Likeminded” lads having a good time, ten bottles of Claret down. And yet, although it may seem trivial, these are the sort of high-powered conversations that ultimately give shape to our society. No wonder it’s falling apart. 

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Many of us are familiar with the story of the Little Mermaid through the 1989 Disney animation. Ariel is blessed with a beautiful singing voice, which she sells to a wicked Sea Witch to join the human world. This story has a happy ending, in which Ariel gets to marry the handsome prince, who is obviously completely in love with her, and she gets her voice back. This is the sanitised fairytale version. 

Hans Christian Andersen tells it a little differently. The Little Mermaid falls in love with the prince after seeing him from afar. Determined to ascend to the human world, she makes a deal with the Sea Witch. She trades her “sweet voice”, allowing the witch to cut out her tongue, for legs. On land, she becomes the prince’s favourite companion. He loves to watch her dance, even though every step makes her feel as if her feet are being pierced with daggers, but she still performs to please him. Because she is mute, he confides in her completely. But ultimately, he regards her as more of a pet than a person in her own right. He makes her sleep on the floor outside his bedroom. When he marries another princess, the Little Mermaid throws herself back into the sea, anguished by the weight of her sacrifice. Ultimately, she dissolves into sea foam before becoming an air spirit. She achieves a kind of spiritual transcendence. 

I know what you want, said the Sea Witch. Engraving by Harry Clarke, 1916

There are various interpretations of this tale. The most compelling, to me, deal with questions of language and gender. The human realm is masculine: it’s the arena of political agency and voice. In this interpretation, the Little Mermaid tells the story of a girl coming of age in a man’s world. That thorny liminal passage where you’re not quite sure who you are and how to present yourself. Whether you should act like a man or a woman. 

Not speaking too loudly so as not to offend anyone. Navigating the contradiction between romantic love and political recognition, that women who love men come up against at every turn. Trying to conform to a world that doesn’t recognise you as one of their own, desperate to succeed all the same. You might as well be dancing on daggers. 

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Fine wine has a lot to do with status, and status is about voice. Voice, in turn, is about who gets to control the narrative, and in doing so, who gets to write the history books. Fine wine may be fancy grape juice, but the conversations it facilitates change the course of our society. Power and influence mingle over a fine vintage of Lafite. Crucially, many of these properties want the right kind of people drinking their wines too. This isn’t any old plonk. 

There is nothing inherently in any wine itself that should exclude women from appreciating it. But the mythologies that surround certain wines do the job of exclusion exquisitely. They say, “this isn’t for you – have some Prosecco with the girls instead.” Or, as the senator Henry Francis yells at his wife, Betty, in Mad Men – “leave the thinking to me!” 

The power of writing lies in its ability to set out new narratives, and I think it’s important to have a point of view. In the wine world, there is still a lot of work to do. What we perceive as an unbiased “standard” is an elaborate narrative construct. These are myths that have been passed down through so many generations that they are now naturalised as “the way things are”. 

Fine wine is dominated by men on all sides, from production, to the merchants, to consumption. The women among us may not always be invited to take a seat at the table. But writing offers a space in which we can assert our own subjectivity, sing our own songs, in a sea of booming male voices that are always threatening to drown us.