Sweeney Preston (left) and Ethan Cavanagh.
Let’s face it – we wine fans don’t do ourselves any favours. With our long-winded descriptions of aromas and flavours, cult-like obsessions with individual producers, and complicated explanations of weird words like ‘tannin’ and ‘terroir’, it’s little wonder that phrases like ‘wine bore’ are hissed at dinner parties.
It gets even worse in parts of the wine trade, with a standard uniform of tweed jackets and raspberry-coloured cords, spitting treated as if it’s an Olympic discipline, and plenty of tut-tutting when people cradle their glass by the bowl rather than holding it by the stem. Some days, it feels like we invite ridicule at every turn.
Those stereotypes form the premise for In Pour Taste: A comedy wine tasting experience, which runs until 25 August at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest arts festival, during which acts from 58 countries will pack 51,446 performances of 3,317 shows into 262 venues.
Teaming-up with local experts
The Fringe is no stranger to wine – on stage, as well as in the pop-up bars surrounding the big venues. Even before the recent runs of ‘Drag Queen Wine Tasting’, Claire Blackler – now a master of wine – ran shows on a canal boat.
Comedians Ethan Cavanagh and Sweeney Preston, who won awards at this year’s Adelaide Fringe and Perth Fringe for In Pour Taste, kick off their debut UK tour at Edinburgh’s Fringe before visiting Stratford, Stourport-on-Severn, Chelmsford, and Guildford during October and November. Each show features five wines, with non-alcoholic alternatives available.
In Edinburgh, they’ve enlisted two local experts to tell audiences about each wine. Murray Ainslie has won a legion of fans since opening The Black Grape wine bar on the city’s Royal Mile in 2022, while Niina Cunynghame-Lang holds a Wine & Spirit Education Trust diploma and is a familiar face at Smith & Gertrude’s bars in Stockbridge and Portobello.
The ‘dictionary corner’ of wine
Cunynghame-Lang was on duty for Friday’s review performance and told the packed house she wanted to introduce them to different grapes and regions. Highlighting Austria and Portugal would be familiar territory for fans of independent bottle shops, but casual drinkers or wine newbies would have gone away with fresh ideas.
Her choices ranged from Beppe Morchetta’s Vino Spumante bubbles from Veneto in Italy, Entero Organic Old Vine Macabeo from Manchuela in Spain, and Funkstille’s skin-contact orange Funk blend of Grüner Veltliner, Gewürztraminer and Riesling from Austria’s Niederösterreich through to a Portuguese pairing of Terras Lusas Rosé and Ai Galera Poetico Tinto.
She handled the rowdy atmosphere really well, especially as the butt of Cavanagh and Preston’s jokes. Cunynghame-Lang’s part echoed Susie Dent’s ‘straight-woman’ role in ‘dictionary corner’ on the British television comedy series 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.
Get ready for audience participation
It’s a cliché to claim each night’s performance is different at the Fringe, but that’s undoubtedly true given Cavanagh and Preston’s level of audience interaction. Their quick-thinking allowed them to adlib jokes and impressions including Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
They ticked off many wine comedy tropes, including getting the audience to contribute random nouns and adjectives to form funny descriptions for wine labels, and getting the crowd to ding a ‘bullsh*t bell’ when they or Cunynghame-Lang used flowery descriptions for the wines.
All the best hosts inject humour into their consumer tastings – whether it’s Mike Turner’s dad jokes with Feel Good Grapes or Isobel Salamon’s pop-culture references with Slonk Wine – but Cavanagh and Preston flip the model on its head, prioritising jokes over wine. If you want a sedate wine tasting then steer well clear, but if you don’t mind audience participation, constant swearing, and dancing along to The Wiggles’ ‘Hot Potato’ then In Pour Taste is hilarious fun.
In Pour Taste: A Comedy Wine Tasting Experience is on at Assembly Roxy’s Snug Bar at 17:50 until 25 August (not 7, 14, 21 August), with tickets available from www.assemblyfestival.com or by calling 0131 623 3030.
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