Can the moon change the way wine tastes?
By Andrew Barrow
We all have our off days. You feel shitty one day (Monday mornings probably) but full of the joys another (last Saturday for me, during the latest edition of Dr Who). Could the same go for wines?
Tim Atkin in a recent Observer article suggested that on certain days wines just do not show themselves well. I often think that a wine is “made” by the company in which is drunk; and by company I am thinking people, the food and the general ambiance. But Atkin goes further by suggesting that wine shouldn’t be tasted (in a professional sense) on a ‘root day’ but slurped on a ‘fruit day’ as determined by the moon.
He quotes one of Marks & Spencer’s wine buyers as saying that the company swears by the lunar cycle. They never, apparently, hold press tastings on root days. “We showed the same wines on different days last year, one of which was on a root day, and there was a vast difference between them. It really affected the aromatic whites and the reds”
If you are a believer in the bio-dynamic principles employed by many winemakers, then I am sure you will have no problem accepting root and flower days. Can the moon, which affects so much on this planet (nail and hair growth, tides etc.) really have such an influence on how a wine tastes? It is made from water, after all.
Atkins seems to think so, going so far as to recommend a .
