Top of the Pops 1976 (and what wine were we drinking ?)

Sat watching TOTP 2 on BBC television recently as a respite from the omnipresent Olympics. An episode from 1976.

I mused that around that time music (by which I mean 'popular' music) was such a great part of life for everyone, or so it seemed.

NME was required reading for any serious person. John Peel was listened to religiously. Top of the Pops was never missed, no matter what the circumstances.

Record collections were examined, played and commented on by anyone who happened to come round.

The sound was much better. None of those stupid earpieces or heaven help us headphones (how silly they look walking around festooned with such audio appendages).

Is this just silly nostalgia, or is there any substance to this ?

Examining the charts of 1976 one finds all sorts of material ranging from albums Dark Side of the Moon (Pinkfloyd) and A Night at the Opera (Queen), to singles I am a Cider Drinker (The Wurzels) and Save Your Kisses for Me (Brotherhood of Man)

Looking back it is easy to see that musical offerings (no reference intended to J.S. Bach or Schoenberg) ranged from the sublime to the...well I'm not sure how to describe them.

As for the wines... What would you have been supping while listening to your favourite track ?

British or Irish wine (yes, made from imported grape juice - can't remember the brand names - apart from Rheingau-  but they were rough, to say the least), Matteus Rose, Piat du Beaujolais, Sauternes at Christmas, not forgetting Blue Nun. Or perhaps not. You might not even have drunk any of this stuff at all, except at parties.

Mostly you could say that widely available wines (i.e. not from specialist merchants) were fairly unremarkable, indeed sometimes downright bad. It would have been more or less the same in France and other winemaking countries too.

Whereas music may have deteriorated since 1976 (and this is an entirely personal and subjective view), the choice and quality of wine now available has improved immeasurably, even miraculously, to attain a golden age undreamed of then.

To what do we owe this flowering of the viticultural and winemaking arts ?

There is no simple answer. I do however think that this is largely due to the improvement in the wine knowledge and experience of the 'average' wine drinker and the knowledge, viticultural and scientific of the winemakers.

Wine drinkers are exposed to many different wines in restaurants, supermarkets, on holiday and have developed a taste for good drinkable wines. Result: a demand for good drinkable wines.

Winemakers large and small are much better equipped both intellectually and technologically to cope with most things nature can throw at them and know precisely what they are doing and why. Result: good drinkable wines.

Another factor is that people have more money in their pockets than in 1976 and the relative price of a bottle of wine has fallen considerably, despite increases in duty (in the UK). Without adjusting for purchasing power something costing £1 in 1976 would now cost £6.61; if you earned £1 in 1976, you would now earn £14.84. So according to this simple arithmetic prices have increased by 6 times but incomes have gone up by almost 15 times.

Wine is now affordable for most people, and wine producers know this.

I am sure there are many other factors at work but the upshot is that we were not drinking very pleasant wines in 1976 and I do not look back on this period as a lost paradise, except perhaps for some of the music.