It’s big and clever – Johnny Goodhall’s last drop

The winner would be the last wine writer able to fasten his trousers

WHEN MY illustrious editor told me he was going on a selfpropelled fact-finding mission in Burgundy (a gastronomic cycling jolly around the vineyards) I was inspired to copyright the idea for a brand new reality TV show.

"I’m a wine writer, get me lunch" combines the finest voyeuristic attributes of "Big Brother" with the most imaginative and sadistic elements of the Japanese show "Endurance".

Why not invite 10 slightly overweight wine writers on a gastronomic tour de France where they cycle from one Michelin-starred restaurant to the next? What they don’t know – to use the jargon – is that the last one to arrive at each hostelry has to pay for the ensuing five-course noshathon for the whole party.

The loser is also required to conduct an interview, without the aid of a tape-recorder, while eating a huge bowl of moules mariniére and drinking an entire case of young Muscadet.

By setting the competition in a particularly mountainous wine region, perhaps near the Alps or even in the Andes, there would be no need for any voting (virtual or otherwise).  The Sir Lunchalot title would simply go to the last one standing, and probably the last one able to fasten his trousers.

The liquid lunch used to be an integral part of the wine trade.  In the good old days we would never dream of going to a tasting that didn’t stretch to four courses with cheese, petits fours, Cognac and cigars.  But then we got all serious.

We discovered things called "brands" and "marketing" and realised that some weirdos are in the business to make a "profit".  Consequently, the wine trade soon lost its appeal for sons who didn’t much fancy the church or the army, and it began to employ men (and women!) with qualifications.

Now, the trouble with these clued-up Johnny-Come-Latelys is that they tend to jog to and from meetings and drink only mineral water with their light midday repast.

In short, the wine trade came to regard the liquid lunch as an occupational hazard, rather than one of the greatest perks of the job. But recent scientific research has brought to light the benefits of a lunchtime sharpener or three, so hopefully attitudes might soon change.

In his paper, "Smoking, Drinking and Income", Christopher Auld, professor of health economics at the University of Calgary in Canada, argues that our drinking culture might actually be beneficial to the economy, rather than damaging to it, as most people assume.

 We’ve had the health benefits of moderate drinking drummed into us until we’re all word-perfect, but professor Auld’s study is the first I have seen linking drinking directly with earnings.

Astonishingly, according to his research, moderate drinkers earn on average 10% more than teetotallers and even binge drinkers are 6% better off than abstainers.  The question raised by this report is whether there is a direct connection between drinking and earnings, or whether it is merely a reflection of the way business is done.

Greg Philo, professor of Sociology at Glasgow University, points out that "a lot of top jobs depend on networking in golf clubs and city bars, and so drinking can improve job opportunities".

There was once a study in Glagow that suggested there was a link between alcohol and nosebleeds, until someone pointed out that drunken Glaswegians are simply more likely to punch each other on the nose.

Anyway, according to Auld, "It appears that having 2.5 drinks a day is the level at which there is a maximum benefit to your health – for example, averting a heart attack – and to have the most beneficial effects on your income."

He even goes on to argue that, "It is going to be harder for government to justify tax by claiming that reducing drinking will help overall to increase production."

A similar study by Michael Shields and "Ziggy" MacDonald at Leicester University suggests that men can expect to boost their income by more than 20% by drinking a little more than three glasses of wine a day, while women could improve theirs by more than 40% by making sure they drink two glasses of wine a day.  We can but dream.

There are also reports linking wine in particular, with increased mental activity and linking alcohol in general, with higher levels of intelligence.  The Swedish bio-physicist Gisela Hagberg compared the brain scans of wine drinkers, seven of which were sommeliers and seven of which were ordinary members of the human race.

Apparently, there was increased activity in the amygdal (the part of the brain that reacts to pleasure) in both sets of tasters, but the sommeliers also experienced an analytical response to the wines.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that the more you know about a subject – be it wine, opera or mating calls of the Serengeti – the more you will get out of it.

And speaking of getting out of it, a study of rats in a maze at Concordia University in Montreal (those Canadians!) revealed that the rodents who found their way around the quickest were also the most likely to go to an area where they could get a drink, which reminds me very much of Vinexpo, while supporting the popular notion of the heavy drinking genius.

Come to think of it, my editor is one of the cleverest people I know.  He gets to cycle round Burgundy while I’m stuck in an office.