Wine and Jane Austen, part two

I really wasn't planning on writing a second blog post about Jane Austen and wine (how much can there be to say?!), but I stumbled upon another connection. At home in Portland for midterms weekend, I attended Kate Hamill's clever stage adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. After poor Marianne has her heart broken by Mr. Willoughby, Mrs. Jennings offers a glass of "the finest old Constantia wine." (Marianne's sister Elinor drinks the wine instead, but that's beside the point.)

The name "Constantia" rang a bell from my reading of The Wine Bible, so I hurried to look it up. It turns out it's a South African winery with a history dating back to 1685: "Constantia produced Vin de Constance, a luscious dessert wine made from muscat blac a petits grains grapes. The wine rose to become one of the most sought-after dessert wines in all of Europe, ordered by the case by Napoleon Bonaparte and never absent from the table of King Frederick the Great of Germany" (895). And some good news: you can still get Vin de Constance today (though it's not cheap)!

Of course, this all set me wondering whether Jane Austen mentions wine elsewhere in her writings. The answer is, yes, often, especially in her letters. Some interesting things I learned about Austen from her comments on wine:

• Austen wasn't immune to overindulgence and its consequences: "I believe I drank too much wine last night at Hurstbourne; I know not how else to account for the shaking of my hand today." (Letter to Cassandra, 20 Nov 1800)
• She was not a fan of orange wine: "The pleasures of friendship, of unreserved conversation, of similarity of taste and opinions will make good amends for orange wine." (Letter to Cassandra, 20 June 1808)
• In Austen's opinion, increasing wine consumption was a definite advantage of getting older: "By the bye, as I must leave off being young, I find many douceurs in being a sort of chaperon, for I am put on the sofa near the fire and can drink as much wine as I like." (Letter to Cassandra, 6 Nov 1813)

[With thanks to the aptly named blog Drunk Austen, most particularly https://drunkausten.com/2017/06/19/jane-austen-the-wino/.]

USUAL wines

USUAL - from the same people that bring us VineBox (https://usualwines.com/) - is taking over instagram feeds and utilizing digital marketing to build their brand. With minimalist packaging (pic below) and an unusual bottle design, they are targeting millennials who want to soak up summer with their own private stash of wine. At 6.3oz, they are describing their offering as a "large glass of real wine, in a bottle" - the standard glass is 5oz (VineBox vials are 3.4oz). With nearly 8,000 followers

(https://www.instagram.com/usualwines/) their instagram features pictures a desirable lifestyle filled with parties, sunshine, and the finer things. There is really not much about the wine at all, they are selling an experience.

It is not until you go to checkout that you even find out that the wine is from California, what the varietals are, and some information about the production. At $48 / 6 glasses of red or rose, they are charging $8 / 'big' glass - which is not very cheap when compared to your average bottle. BUT - how do you put a price on your own potential instagram posts with your swanky looking bottle? Seemingly there is a strong market out there that is willing to either swallow this price or don't care to do the math and are instead buying this wine exactly for how it is marketed to them - for the experience and the lifestyle that drinking it awards them. Who knows if the wine in this $8 glass compares to a similarly priced traditional bottle (on a per glass basis), my theory is that the people buying it don't really care.