Modern winemaking

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Until the mid-20th century, most vineyards were small and worked mainly by hand. After the Second World War, as French vineyards modernised and the industry grew into a global economic behemoth. To them, what seems like a story of technical and economic triumph is really the tragic tale of how wine lost its way. Before the War, France had just 35,000 tractors; in the next two decades, it would acquire more than a million, as well as US-made pesticides and fertilisers. At the same time, oenologists determined that wine should cease being a matter of chance, but should be based on science.

Vineyards are now soaked with pesticide and fertiliser to protect the grapes, which are a notoriously fragile crop. In 2000, vineyards used 3% of all agricultural land, but 20% of the total pesticides. In 2013, a study found traces of pesticides in 90% of wines in French supermarkets.

What happens once the grapes have been harvested is, to natural wine enthusiasts, scarcely less horrifying. The modern winemaker has access to a vast armamentarium of interventions, from supercharged lab-grown yeast to anti-microbials, antioxidants, acidity regulators and filtering gelatins, all the way up to industrial machines. Wine is passed through electrical fields to prevent calcium and potassium crystals from forming, injected with gases to aerate or protect it, or split into its constituent liquids by reverse osmosis and reconstituted with a more pleasing alcohol to juice ratio.

Natural winemakers believe that none of this is necessary. The basics of winemaking are, in fact, almost stupefyingly simple: all it involves is crushing together some ripe grapes. When the yeasts that live on the skin of the grape come into contact with the sweet juice inside, they begin gorging themselves on the sugars, releasing bubbles of carbon dioxide into the air and secreting alcohol into the mixture. This continues either until there is no more sugar, or the yeasts make the surrounding environment so alcoholic that even they cannot live in it. At this point, you have wine.

Making natural wine means going without the methods that have given modern winemakers so much control over their product. It also means jettisoning the expectations of mainstream wine culture, which dictates that wine from a certain place should always taste a certain way. (A part of an article in The Guardian, reproduced in The Week, 7 July 2018)

What has this to do with Epicureanism? I choose it, among a host of other dismal issues, because it illustrates a lack of moderation – the conversion of a simple procedure into a massive, modern, chemical-contaminated production dependent on science and fancy machinery. Pesticides in 90% of wines in French supermarkets? What is natural anymore?

The sorry state of British education, part 2, A-levels

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The second in a three-part series on the sorry state of British education. You can read the first part on GCSEs here.

A-levels are the exams British students take at 18 years old to assess whether they can go to university, and how prestigious a university they can go to. They are also important when applying for jobs; an A-level in Maths for instance, can give you access to jobs in the technological and finance sectors that would otherwise be very difficult to enter.

Traditionally, A-levels were highly regarded internationally. They were said to be the same standard as a degree in America. But it’s clear that the system has some underlying weaknesses.

The first is the narrowness of the A-level curriculum. Most students will only complete three full A-levels; a small proportion of highly able students will complete four. This means that British students lack the breadth of knowledge that could make them more internationally competitive. Most students in other developed countries, particularly those who take the International Baccalaureate, leave school with a far more varied range of skills. They will have studied Maths, at least one science and a foreign language until 18. The vast majority of British students will not leave school with those abilities, and so are at a disadvantage when applying to university or for jobs which involve working abroad and require a wide set of skills.

The second problem is the excessive emphasis British society places on A-levels, and academic education generally. Despite a slight decline, they are still a tough qualification, one which many people aren’t naturally suited to. Yet the more vocational alternatives to A-levels are seriously underfunded, and lack the recognition by employers and social respectability that they ought to have. As a consequence of this system, Britain has some of the most able university students in the developed world, and a disproportionate number of the world’s leading universities. But it faces a severe shortage in technical skills, something which will get worse if migration falls after Brexit. There is also an increasing political and economic gap between those who have A-levels and those who don’t.

The third problem is that despite being a respectable qualification, A-levels are insufficient when applying to the more lucrative jobs. Because so many people now go to university, many employers will insist their prospective employees have degrees. But this reduces the value of the A-level as an achievement in and of itself. Instead, it has been reduced to a signalling device for universities. My grandmother left school at 18 with A-levels, and went on to work for the Daily Telegraph. Such an opportunity would be virtually unthinkable today, unless my grandmother had gone on to university. If they don’t go to university, A-level graduates tend to have to do an apprenticeship or some form of further training to make a success of their careers. This is an utter waste of taxpayer’s money, one which only punishes the working class who are disproportionately unlikely to have a degree. Instead, fewer people should go to university, giving more opportunities to those who could only afford to be educated by the state.

Overall, A-levels are still a decent qualification- one which anyone should be proud to have done well in. But the government needs to realise they’re increasingly anachronistic in a globalised world where university education is becoming the norm. Instead, more funding should be allocated to alternatives to A-levels, and to students who never intend on going to university. But those who would genuinely benefit from university should do the International Baccalaureate or the Cambridge Pre-U: both of which are more rigorous and enjoy a better international reputation than A-levels. Private schools are already making the switch, it’s time state schools followed.

 

Epicureanism and death

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At the beginning of his autobiography “Speak, Memory”, Vladimir Nabokov writes:

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness ……Nature expects a full-grown man to accept the two black voids, fore and aft, as stolidly as he accepts the extraordinary visions in between.”

This is a crucial point of Epicureanism: to accept the two black voids fore and aft as a natural and inevitable part of life.

So you strut and fret your way upon the stage and then are heard no more. It is therefore valid to ask yourself, “Have I led a happy and productive life? For the brief time during which I will be remembered, will it be with affection, with respect for achievement, or simply for being a kind, decent person, thoughtful of others, dismayed at poverty and injustice, generous and kind, and with a sense of humour?

If none of the above, think hard about your life, because it is a waste if you depart an unfeeling nonentity. For depart you surely will, and the shock of death is more acceptable if you feel you have lived decently and well.

A maximum wage?

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Could capping top incomes tackle our rising inequality more effectively than conventional approaches to narrowing ghe vast economic divide? The Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies hss published “The Case for A Maximum Wage”, by Sam Pizzigati, an IPS associate fellow and the co-editor of Inequality.org. 

 Pizzigati docusses how egalitarians worldwide are demonstrating that a “maximum wage” could be both economically viable and politically practical. One major American city is already socking a higher tax rate on companies with wide divides between worker and executive pay. Activists in other jurisdictions are working to deny inequality-generating enterprises government contracts and subsidies.
 
Governments could go further still and start using their tax systems to enforce fair income ratios between rich and poor across the board. The ultimate goal ought to be a world without the super-rich.

Moderate Epicureans would probably support a maximum wage. Every unequal society in history has either descended into violence or otherwise collapsed, so there is an historical backing for quickly doing something about excessive income and wealth. Why does the owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, need $143.1 billion? How can he possibly spend even $1 billion of it? How can he justify the low wages and poor working conditions in his company? Yes, I have done my little bit to put him where he is – customers love the sevice – but the key is “moderation” – he has none.

The problem comes with implementation. Studies have shown how insecure rich people actually are. Few believe they have enough money and want even more. They are willing to spend some of it to protect their store of wealth, and this means lobbying and the suborning of ambitious people who are prepared to curry favour in return for hard cash. It’s why American democracy is descending into farce. The people involved are focussed on themselves, not the nation. Almost the last political patriot standing, John McCain, has just, sadly, died; the future of the Supreme Court as a fair arbiter of law and the Constitution is uncertain, to say the least. The chances of a maximum salary are slim indeed, but future generations will see the rich-poor divide as part of the death knell of a rather good political system.