Both the specialist wine and mainstream press have been buzzing this week with the news that venerable Australian rockers ACDC have teamed up with one of Australia’s largest winemakers to market a range of wines. The winemaker, Warburn Estate, is a respected producer of decent everyday gluggers, and some highly regarded reserve wines.
Given that ACDC’s original frontman, Bon Scott, drank himself to death in 1980, ACDC’s “Highway to Hell” Cabernet Sauvignon is presumably an example of the very blackest sort of rock n roll humour. (I hope so – the alternative is depressing.) The other three wines in the range are also named for ACDC songs. Don’t look for a link between title and contents: identifying the rollicking lusty adventure that is “You shook me all night long” with a bottle of sweet little Moscato suggests that relating wine to music was not a priority.
Why wine, though? It seems incongruous. I suppose even hell-raisers succumb to dinner parties, eventually. More pertinently, when you command such loyalty, identification and passion, congruency doesn’t matter. Your people just want you in the routines and rituals of their lives. ACDC have recently endorsed a collector’s edition of Monopoly. Monopoly and a glass of Moscato – now that’s what I call rock n roll.
Madonna, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Kiss, Whitesnake and Barbara Streisand are among the musicians marketing or endorsing wine. The involvement ranges from the straightforward slapping on of a label by canny wineries who have bought the rights, to truly collaborative projects between celebrity wine lover and a boutique wine producer in which the aspiration, at least, is to capture some spirit of the music or person in the pace and structure of the wine.
Celebrity endorsement is the antithesis of the preoccupation with origin and typicity that characterizes ‘wine appreciation’. You could dismiss it as financially expedient and soulless. But the attraction of wine for those in music, and film, is an indication of wine’s special powers. Wine has been symbolic for millennia – it can stand for something more than itself. When it comes to aesthetic experiences, asserting your preference is an expression of personal identity, and a way of finding your tribe.
Even at the very highest levels of quality and price, wine exerts this pull. The top wines of Bordeaux, Champagne and Burgundy are not only wines; they are luxury items that are capable of expressing the influence, wealth and exclusivity of the tiny but powerful tribe who can afford them. That’s why the owners of fashion brands such as Chanel and Louis Vuitton have invested staggering amounts of money in properties such as Rauzan Ségla and Château Yquem. Those ACDC wines just need to be fun, drinkable wines for rock n roll fans getting together to party. The luxury wine brands have no option but to defend and seek out the very highest levels of quality and aesthetic pleasure if they are to endure, and maintain substance as well as style.
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