It was the afternoon of the first day of the second Ashes test at Lord’s. In the brief lull between overs, the camera panned, as it often does, to a recognisable face in the crowd: Jacob Rees-Mogg. The traditionalist Tory presented exactly as you’d expect: Savile Row suit, tie and cufflinks. But there was one wrong note: he was drinking from a plastic glass.
Say what you like about Mr Rees-Mogg – and people do – but one attribute that I think we can all agree he possesses in abundance is that he’s in touch, almost viscerally, with his own sense of how things should be done. And this sense, as I perceive it, would very much preclude drinking from a plastic cup. Yet here he was, in footage being beamed around the world, sipping from one, an unlikely ambassador for this awful trend. Plastic glass culture had reached a nadir.
Plastic glasses have long been a staple at pub beer gardens, festivals and the like, where the prospect of inebriated punters and broken glass in close proximity had crystal-clear implications. ‘You’ll need plastic glasses if you’re going outside,’ they’d tell you. And it was plainly pretty sensible, so no one particularly minded.
But since then plastic glasses have been on a mission creep. The public’s tacit consent on the matter was initially on the understanding that we were drinking beer, probably to excess, in perhaps slightly squalid circumstances, and that there was every chance we might smash up both the vessel and each other. However, these days, you’re often not asked if you’re going outside, or taking your drinks to your seats for the show – you just get given plastic regardless.
At a recent visit to the Royal Festival Hall, when offered plastic and explaining I was only here for a drink rather than a concert and would prefer glass, I was told there weren’t any. Unless we start protesting, this is the future: ‘Here’s your £65 bottle of Chablis, sir, an ice bucket for that – and here are some plastic beakers of the sort that we would serve to toddlers to drink it from.’
Unless we start protesting, this is the future: ‘Here’s your £65 bottle of Chablis, sir, an ice bucket for that – and here are some plastic beakers of the sort that we would serve to toddlers to drink it from’
Because while it’s one thing drinking lager out of a plastic cup, it’s quite another when it’s wine, when the vessel from which the drink is consumed has a pronounced effect on how the palate perceives it. Plastic makes good wine taste bad, and bad wine taste terrible. This is why people shell out £25 for a single Riedel glass. And this is also why no one should be expected to drink wine out of plastic glasses in peacetime.
The climax of the wine-centric comic road movie Sideways (2004) had the lead character finally opening the collectable bottle he had so prized for so long, a Château Cheval Blanc 1961 – and drinking it in a burger joint from a disposable styrofoam cup intended for cola. Twenty years on, this joke would not have the same resonance as we are all now familiar with some version of this quality disparity between the cup and the liquid therein.
I went to Lord’s myself two days after Mr Rees-Mogg. It prides itself on being the only cricket ground in the world to which you can take your own wine. I opted for a Margaret River chardonnay as a nod to the rampaging Aussies. It went down as easily as England’s middle-order batsmen.
But here’s the thing: while circumstances may have forced me to have plastic to drink it from, à la Rees-Mogg, there I was in my seat in the Compton Lower, three down before lunch, in possession of a glass bottle. And the regular sound around us throughout the afternoon of champagne corks popping confirmed that I was by no means alone in this. So if we’re considered responsible (and sober) enough for bottles, it’s not much of a leap to let us have glasses to pair them with, surely.
As a West Ham fan I wouldn’t ever suggest introducing glassware at football games. Our fans can do enough damage using plastic pint glasses as projectiles – see events at the Europa Conference League Final in Prague. It would be insane. But it’s horses for courses and the MCC is not Upton Park, and neither is the theatre, the opera et al.
Admittedly some rowdier cricket crowds do enjoy later in the afternoon, after drinks (often after many drinks), creating a so-called ‘snake’ by joining together all their empties in a chain. But let them. They’ll be using plastic pint pots for this project. No one is going to attempt this with wine glasses.
The insidious spread of plastic cups is particularly at odds with society’s wider preoccupation with being environmentally friendly. You know what makes a perfectly sustainable, reusable vessel to drink wine from? A wine glass. Whereas I doubt the flimsy things Mr Rees-Mogg and I were given would survive more than a couple of servings before being split and then binned.
Of course some plastic cups are better than others. There are some of satisfying robustness and clarity that could almost pass: I was served one at the Donmar Warehouse recently that I had to examine closely to confirm it was plastic. But these remain all too rare. Most are effectively disposable.
Viniculture is arguably the highest expression of human achievement, a cornerstone of the Athenian classical ideal that underpins western civilisation. It’s a dereliction to mistreat the fermented fruits of this rich heritage with plastic.
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