Everyone has a story about Blue Nun. If only the Blue Nuns could talk, I bet they’d have some stories of their own.
Blue Nun is Alan Partridge’s drink of choice. A drink he orders by the half bottle when fine dining in Norwich with his fictional Producer Tony Hayers. Between the 1950s and 1980s, Blue Nun was the drink of choice and a very popular international brand. For some of you it may conjure up happy times; and for others like me, the memories of Blue Nun make me shudder.
Dinner parties have evolved over time. In the 1970s, Hock was served with spaghetti in aspic, stuffed cocktail grapes, savoury sausage salad and a spunky shrimp-salmon mould. What the heck is Hock? It is a German wine, a form of Blue Nun, rather like what Mother Abbess is to Maria Rainer, singing her heart out in the mountains. It could be paired with anything, and people relaxed with this relative knowledge. The upper echelons of society had always enjoyed vintages, but the majority of Brits were only just coming round from their drunken stupor.
This provided a Herculean task for wine companies- everyone likes a challenge! How to convince the English to drink red wines? Italy and France were well ahead of the game of course, having the vineyards on their terra ferma. We were seriously lagging behind.
David Gluckman, author of “That Sh*t will never sell!”, writes that the preposterous solution was to dye a bottle of Blue Nun red. Yes, you read that correctly! We could not stand a first growth Bordeaux which we described as “complex” and “overpowering”.
Slowly we needed to change our drinking “habits”.
This new wine was labelled Piat d’or and was de rigueur in the 1980s. It would be paired by yuppies all over the country with cheese fondue, party vol au vents and peach melba roulade. The 1990s saw our tastes changing and as we have evolved to the 2000s (Darwin would be proud of the homo sapiens!), the introduction of spiralized wine cellars, climatised wine rooms, wine deliveries from the Wine Society and Berry Bros have become the norm. In lockdown, friends would meet up on zoom for wine nights and wine taster classes. We have become sommeliers.
The Good Ordinary Claret is a popular choice and yet it remains to be a blend of many wines to produce a flavour. It’s not a bad thing, but purists may be critical. In France, blended bottles have a small label called Chateau Sommeliers, so be warned if you are looking for an authentic brew.
The first bottle of wine that I ever took to a dinner party was when I had begun my ancient history degree at Newcastle University. Some third-year boys had cherry picked some of the first-year girls (honoured or insulted, I am not sure!) and off I went to this party, via the local off license.
The Geordie man was extremely helpful “alreet pet, this will taste greet”. I plonked my bottle of Blue Nun on the table until one bloke roared “who on earth bought the bottle of Blue Nun?” I went the colour of burgundy…..red burgundy. Hock anyone?
