Red or fizz? My husband and I are defined by our booze

Hands up, dear readers, who among you is a wine snob? Crikey, you nearly took my eye out there. But I raise a glass to our shared snootiness.

Now that books are on Kindles and music on Spotify playlists, it’s quite hard to enter someone’s home and immediately judge them. Until they offer you a glass of wine, obviously. Screw tops are now deemed acceptable, sigh. But silly labels are an instant giveaway: Goats do Roam, Hornswoggle

Stay-in-Bed Red, Old Fart & Old Tart. Wine is supposed to be bottled poetry (with thanks to Robert Louis Stevenson) that brings light to the secrets of the soul (Horace), not a verse of miserabilist doggerel.

I must confess that my palate has been overeducated far beyond what is useful or practical in the modern world. As a result of doing a wine-tasting course, plus my natural predilection for pretension, there’s a glaring disequilibrium between my taste and budget. Unless someone else is buying, obviously. But I digress.

The latest news for armchair oenophiles comes from research in Italy claiming that extroverts tend to prefer more acidic wines, such as champagne or chianti, while agreeable people enjoy a “complex bouquet” with high alcohol content, such as a Californian cabernet. While I sniffily take issue with “extrovert” being incompatible with “agreeable”, it’s interesting to note that “emotionally stable” drinkers enjoy full-bodied reds such as shiraz or cabernet sauvignon. Those who are “open-minded” may prefer a tannic drink with a “persistent” taste or smell.

Anyway, the study, from the University of Verona and the University of Macerata, looked at nearly 1,200 people, from teenagers to octogenarians. Participants had their personalities assessed using a questionnaire which measured the “Big Five” characteristics: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism and openness. Then they were asked to name their favourite wine. Being Italian, they all had their own favourite, as opposed to the more Anglo-Saxon: “Whatever’s going. Yeah, right to the top, please.”

But I’m not entirely sure if these divergences aren’t more of a classic chicken-and-egg scenario.

My husband drinks shiraz. He is indeed emotionally stable (one of us has to be). But each glass has alcohol content north of 13 per cent, which possibly makes that the primary source of the magnanimity and relaxation. Predictably, I prefer fizz. Cava, champagne if someone else is paying, with a 12 per cent content and many tiny bubbles. No wonder I’m the effervescent life and soul, at least until I fall off my shoes.

But these findings are hardly definitive. Not so long ago a French survey claimed: “Red wine drinkers described themselves as confident, relaxed, strong and intelligent, whereas white wine drinkers chose terms like practical, shy, quiet and reserved to describe themselves. Rosé drinkers called themselves loud, warm and charming.”

What’s arguably more salient is the strong psychological dimension to our preferences; when classical music plays in an off-licence, customers choose more expensive bottles; in blind tastings, people express a preference for wines they believe to be more expensive.

It’s not entirely our fault, wine being a “complex, culture-laden, multisensory stimulus”. And also such a simple, uncomplicated pleasure. In wine there is truth, said Pliny – ain’t that the in vino veritas and no mistake. Cheers!