We’re all pretentious now
There was a time, many years ago, when we’d laugh and scoff at pretentious descriptions of wine that contained, say, ‘aromas of rich dark currants, nectarine skins, gushing blackberry, but lots of fragrant tobacco, rich soil, white flowers, smashed minerals and metal’ (actual review). Now that such descriptions are commonplace, meaningless and we ignore them completely, other products have got on the bandwagon. Nothing can be just what it is any more – it has to stand for something else, something more, something usually pretentious.
Coffee is the new wine. My pack of Taylors of Harrogate ground coffee, Rare Blossom Ethiopia, is a ‘dazzling riot of honeysuckle, mango, blossom, whisky and spice’ (what, no ‘echoes of a Bach fugue in the background’?). It’s been some years since I’ve been able to go into a coffee shop and ask for something as simple as a white coffee (it doesn’t seem to exist any more); it would be easier asking for an Austrian goat milk double-half-caf-half-decaf-soy milk cappuccino – extra hot – with a dash of Madagascar cinnamon and half a tablespoon of caramel-latte-frappa-mocha.
A list of ‘guest beans’ on a coffee shop menu (handwritten chalk on blackboard, obvs) includes those from Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Guatemala, Colombia and ‘Coeur D’Afrique’ (a place or a state of mind? The name evokes Conrad’s anti-imperialist Hearts of Darkness, set in the Congo; despite being a slightly dangerous place to hunt for speciality beans right now, the Democratic Republic of Congo is the ‘future of coffee’, according to the NY Times. The aforementioned Coeur D’Afrique bean contains huckleberry, violet and sugar cane, but might as well also give off a whiff of, say, earth freshly dug up by Fairtrade slaves). The list of exotic (yet poor, obvs) countries conjures up colonial images of seventeenth century explorers returning from the New World with plundered treasures such as gold, tobacco, spices, chocolate and, indeed, coffee.
If coffee is the new wine, chocolate is the new coffee. In the 1980s, Ferrero Rossier and After Eights were the ultimate pretentious chocolate but that’s nothing compared to the new breed of brands where ‘lemon, poppy seed and baobab’ is an actual flavour. Chocolate from Ecuador is apparently ‘flowery and fruity’; from Madagascar it’s ‘intense red fruit with cherry notes’, whilst Southeast Asia has ‘smoky and earthy flavors’.
(When it comes to hot beverages and chocolate, sorry, but I’m so happy with a Sainsbury’s Red Label cup of tea and regular Kit Kat I can’t even put it into words.)
If products such as wine and perfume were the precursors of this pretentious parade, nowadays many other once-average and taken-for-granted items such as coffee, chocolate, craft beer, vinyl records and bikes are revitalised as specialised and authentic, artisan products with the intention of making the buying public feel like connoisseurs. Niche has become mainstream. I mainly blame advertising and hipsters.
What’s the next product to get the pretentious treatment? Speciality industrial-strength bleach sourced from uranium mines in Namibia? With shades of deadly nightshade, aromas of Agent Orange and the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now in the distance...
Previously on Barnflakes
The agony of choice
Now serving flat white
Not for all the tea in China
Proud to serve