Ingestibles news: food, drink, tobacco

Many news items about ingestibles have appeared in recent weeks.

Here are but a few, arranged by category.

Drinks

Who knew that England’s wine production was such a success, despite our rather damp and cool summers over the past two years.

Coloured glass

Before going into England’s wine success, however, it should be noted that coloured glass is back in fashion.

However, this is not your grandmother’s transparent coloured glass selection of cranberry or teal green goblets. The new high-end glasses and containers happen to be opaque.

I wonder if this opacity is a short cut, obviating the artistry of traditional methods of colouring glass.

On October 22, 2023, The Guardian reported on the trend for coloured glass in general. The article includes photos of the new opaque glass (emphases mine):

After years of minimalist, clear wine glasses, tumblers and dishes, colourful glassware is making a comeback. Brightly hued glass pieces such as purple goblets from the 1970s and coral-pink 1930s candlesticks have seen sales rise 30% since last year, according to Narchie, an app for buying and selling vintage homeware.

And on the high street, John Lewis says that sales of drinkware in shades of damson, amber and cobalt have risen 71% on figures from the same week last year. The department store’s Confetti range – a modern collection decorated with flecks of colour – has gone up by 20%.

It’s a similar story at Ikea. “Customers are daring to introduce new energy and shades into their table settings,” says Paul Kinnen, home furnishing business leader for kitchens at the Swedish furniture retailer.

The opaque coloured glass did nothing to raise my appetite for a glass of cold water or a cocktail. Sometimes the old ways are the best.

That said, the article did cover something more interesting, which is the history of traditional transparent coloured glass dating back to ancient times:

“Coloured glass goes back to the bronze age,” says Dr Sally Cottam, secretary for the Association for the History of Glass. “Well, glass is naturally coloured a bluish green and you decolourise it using different compounds. In the Augustan period, you had vessels in every colour of the rainbow – some really quite tasteless, but fabulous in their own way. Then the Romans went crazy for colourless glass in the later first century. It became the norm, probably in part because the level of glass production increased and also because it lets you show off the colour of your wine.”

And decorative glass has never completely disappeared. Enamelled glass was very popular in the Islamic world; the Venetians rediscovered Roman polychromatic glass in the 15th century and the Victorians also loved it – “particularly cranberry and Bristol blue”, according to Cottam.

Fortunately, ancient traditions are once again in the ascendant:

A Bristol-based glassmaker has revived the Bristol Green shade, manufacturing it in the city for the first time in 200 years. This colour is famous in Europe and North America, and is the origin of the traditional dark green wine bottle. When wine-makers started using clear bottles, Bristol lost its glassmaking industry …

Award-winning designer Tom Dixon’s new collection of tableware and vases, called Bump, uses borosilicate – better known as lab glass, which is strong and withstands heat – and comes in a calming emerald green.

“Made from easily available, unlimited materials and completely recyclable, glass has served us for millennia,” says Dixon. “It is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget how extraordinary it is as a material, as packaging, as a precious object.”

Lovely. Enjoy some nostalgia, if not Granny’s, then something new that’s transparent yet coloured.

English wine

English winemakers are going from strength to strength.

I have tasted some of their products which certainly rival French wines. That was not the case 30 years ago.

On October 19, The Guardian told us:

Many English winemakers say they are expecting to harvest their biggest ever crop over the next few weeks as a combination of favourable weather conditions and expansion boosts production.

Gusbourne, the Kent-based producer and one of the first major wineries to complete its harvest, said it had gathered its largest ever crop, up 25% on last year.

The company, controlled by former Conservative party chair Lord Michael Ashcroft, said the warm growing season last year meant vines emerged from winter in a healthy condition and then enjoyed favourable weather during the flowering period between April and June this year, producing “an abundance of fruit”.

The big brands Nyetimber, Chapel Down and Ridgeview have all said they are expecting their largest ever crop as a result of the weather and investing in additional acreage.

Most production goes to sparkling wines, which will not be available for at least two years, but still wines made this year could be on shelves in the spring.

Ned Awty, the interim chief executive of the trade body WineGB, the national association for the wine industry in England and Wales, said: “This year is shaping up to be a high volume and high-quality harvest. We’ve had reports about impressive bunch size and weight and ripe fruit from all across the country.”

Andrew Carter, the chief executive of Chapel Down, which is two-thirds of the way through its harvest, said he was expecting its output to be “materially larger” than last year’s, and the brand’s previous record, set in 2018.

The group, based near Tenterden in Kent, has added 200 additional acres to take it to 750 under production. Carter said the weather had also been a factor in producing high-quality grapes.

“The weather this year has been truly exceptional,” he said. Carter said the wet July and August had helped vines stay healthy and had not led to problems with disease because the weather had remained cool, and then the warm, sunny September had helped to ripen grapes. “The balance of sugars and concentration of flavours in the grapes is a joy to behold,” he said.

Southern England is blessed with favourable conditions for wine production:

Britain’s winemaking industry is concentrated in Kent, but vineyards in Essex, Hampshire and Sussex also supply independent retailers and UK supermarkets. British wine is sold overseas and the industry has estimated that exports could be worth as much as £350m by 2040.

Winemakers have been expanding – more than doubling in the past decade – as financial investors bet on a market that has been helped by the changing climate and production becoming more professional …

There are now 943 vineyards across Great Britain, according to WineGB. The industry produced 12.2m bottles in 2022, a big step up on the 5.3m bottles in 2017 as investors have piled into the growing market.

Production is expected to reach 25m bottles by 2032, with 7,600 hectares (18,800 acres) of vines planted – almost double the 4,000 hectares (9,900 acres) under production at present.

Excellent news!

English sake

An even more amazing development is that of sake made in — who would have guessed it? — England.

On October 27, The Telegraph‘s Joel Hart wrote about the boom in sake in Great Britain, ‘How British sake became the calling card of the country’s hottest restaurants’:

Picture 10 drinks on tap, ranging from a light and crisp, aromatic brew with notes of apricot and almond to a luxurious pour delivering notes of lychee and cereal. No, these are not the latest beers to hit the market, nor are they wines – this is a line-up of “craft sake”, a new take on Japan’s famous fermented drink. 

At Kanpai, which was the UK and Europe’s first sake brewery and taproom when it opened in 2016, rice – rather than hops or grapes – takes centre stage. Sourced from paddy fields across three prefectures in Japan and fermented with water, yeast and koji (rice grain cultivated with a “magic mould” that kick-starts the yeast fermentation), the rice is transformed into drinks that have distinct styles for each season – and deliver a subtle nod to their surroundings. 

“The local London water has been making [our] delicious drinks for many years,” says Kanpai’s co-founder Lucy Wilson. “The hard water enables us to brew fuller flavoured styles of sake. [Its] minerality is fantastic for fermentation as it excites the yeast,” she explains, producing “lots of fruit-forward, delicate aromatics and bold, luscious flavours”.

Sake’s flavour profiles certainly give grape-derived wines a run for their money. With five traditional brewing styles, versions range from dry to sweet, elegant to complex, unfiltered to crystal clear, with still, sparkling, aged and ume-(plum) and yuzu-infused iterations now sold all over Britain. 

Sake pairings are becoming popular, especially with seafood:

The current vogue of omakase restaurants has also had a role in enhancing the drink’s image. The trend of yielding control to the chef (omakase translates as “I leave it in your hands”), diners can enjoy styles of sake tailored to the sushi they are served. “The rich umami flavours present in both Japanese sake and seafood make them a perfect match,” explains Endo Kazutoshi, a third-generation sushi master and executive chef/owner of Endo at the Rotunda in west London. “The pairing is not merely a chemical coincidence but [based on] wisdom passed down through centuries from master to apprentice.”

The article tells us about various British restaurants that showcase sake.

Ultimately:

For sake bars, it is important to showcase the drink on its own, so while it isn’t uncommon to find sake in cocktails, there has been a shift away from seeing it as an ingredient for mixologists …

When you enter the bar, bottles are displayed on the wall, from mildly sweet to dry, and from light and aromatic to rich and savoury. There’s a sake flight for those who want to explore different styles.

England is a perfect place for manufacturing sake from Japanese rice:

Dojima opened at Fordham Abbey in 2018 with the intent of restoring an ancestral family tradition dating back to 1830s Osaka. Having brewed in Japan, Korea and Myanmar, the family relocated to the UK and settled on the Cambridgeshire estate for their new site.

“We knew that the UK would be a great place to set up if we were to make sake more globally recognised, as London sets trends for food, drink, fashion, arts and music,” explains Kumiko Hashimoto, a family member and the company’s PR and marketing director. “We could have perhaps just imported our family sake from Osaka, but we wanted to do more than that. We wanted to make sake in the UK using local water and the best rices from Japan.”

A sake produced from the well water of Fordham Abbey might be fresh and elegant (the Junmai Dojima) or honeyed and umami-rich (the vintage Cambridge version), but there are yet more styles in production within the county with the Sparkling Sake Brewery established there in 2021. It all points to a fizzing UK sake scene, where the first sip is unlikely to be your last.

How true. I had sake only once, in the United States, and that was 35 years ago. I must try it again.

The article ends with links for sake lovers and novices. There are even sake pairings with cheese, of all things (italics in the original):

Sake can be bought online at Kanpai and Moto, as well from shops including Sorakami and Tengu Sake.

A sake and cheese hamper curated by Erika Haigh can be purchased at La Fromagerie.

How extraordinary!

World Cheese Awards, Norway

Speaking of cheese, on Friday, October 27, the results of the World Cheese Awards held in Trondheim, Norway, were announced.

On Saturday, October 28, The Telegraph‘s Tomé Morrissey-Swan reported:

Delicate, creamy, buttery and soft, with mild peppery blue veins, Norway’s Nidelven blå, a pasteurised cow’s milk blue cheese made on a small farm two hours from Trondheim, was named the best cheese in the world at the World Cheese Awards on Friday.

At the event, held in Trondheim itself, the home favourite trumped a record number of entrants – 4,502 different cheeses submitted from across the globe – to be crowned supreme champion in front of a partisan home crowd. The winner beat a Belgian morbier-style cheese into second place, with a Swiss Alpine entrant coming third.

“This is really great,” said Moren Gangstad, the winning cheesemaker. “All of us who work in the dairy are here today, and we did not expect this. But it’s fantastic.”

Hmm.

I hadn’t heard of the World Cheese Awards until 2022, but the event has been running for decades:

Celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, the World Cheese Awards, run by the Guild of Fine Foods, has risen to be one of the world’s most respected food events, beamed online to viewers around the globe. Winners often see sales spike, with cheese buyers rushing to stock their product. 

Morrissey-Swan was there as a member of the judging panel:

In a huge gymnasium in Trondheim, which is well used to smelling this funky, 100 oversized trestle tables laden with around 45 cheeses each were prepared for the global judging panel of experts.

Despite this being my third year on the panel, I’m still not used to that smell. It’s the first thing that hits you – all the beautiful sweet, salty, musty notes blended with sweat and mould. Around 20 people watched from the stands, a bigger crowd than any football match I’ve ever played in …

Cheeses are evaluated on four categories: their look (is the rind appealing, is the colour consistent?), body and texture (they are squidged to assess moisture and fat content – harder to do with a cream cheese), aroma (does it small as expected? Ammonia can be good, but it shouldn’t smell off), and, most importantly, flavour and mouthfeel – it should be balanced and complex, with no bitter off-notes.

My table was stellar … We argued over the merits of paprika-smeared goat’s cheeses, smoky cow’s cheeses (is the smoke artificial or natural?), and a particularly beautiful cheese aged in sandstone that smelt just like roast mutton …

Each table awards products bronzes, silvers and golds, and one super gold, to be taken to a small panel of elite judges who, almost unfathomably, eat a hundred or more cheeses throughout the day. We dished out 12 golds on our table – others struggled to find one.

Being a French then a British cheese aficionado, I was desperate to find out how my two favourite countries fared.

Unfortunately, France won only one award in the top 16 cheeses. It came in at 13th with:

Goustal La Bergere from Société des Caves, FRANCE

The UK fared comparatively better, with two, in 12th and 16th places, respectively:

Sinodun Hill from Norton and Yarrow Cheese, UNITED KINGDOM

Wigmore from Village Maid Cheese, UNITED KINGDOM

A British cheesemaker explains why but says it’s good news in the long run:

… London-based cheese and cider expert, and World Cheese Awards veteran, Sam Wilkin thinks the range is becoming increasingly diverse. Indeed, judges hailed from all over, as did cheeses …

“We’ve become very anglo and eurocentric about cheese, but when you come to an event like this, you realise these cheeses are being made everywhere,” said Wilkin. “There are people doing delicious things, traditions being upheld, innovations happening, it’s really very exciting. I tried a camel cheese from Kazakhstan, and a viking cheese that, though certainly not to my palate, is a delicacy here in Norway and exemplifies that cheese is really just a way to preserve milk”…

It might not have been a great year for Britain, but British cheeses have won on 11 previous occasions, almost a third of the total winners, with Cornish Blue and Bath Blue winning in recent years. Cornish Kern, a more intense, longer-matured relation to the nettle-wrapped Cornish Yarg, was the most recent winner, picking up the top prize in 2017. Last year a gruyère earned top spot at the event in Newport, Wales.

Wilkin predicts the prize could be transformative for the winning dairy. “You hear wonderful stories of really small-scale cheeses winning the World Cheese Awards, and their businesses are transformed literally overnight. There are people I know waiting on the phone.” Nidelven blå isn’t currently sold in the UK, though around 300 shops in Norway stock it. Expect that to change soon.

My commiserations to France. They have not done well at the World Cheese Awards in recent years, which is disappointing.

French cuisine world’s best

After my disappointment at France not receiving more World Cheese Awards, I was encouraged to read an article in The Telegraph which appeared the following day on Sunday, October 29, ‘Ignore the statistics: French cuisine is the best in the world’, in which Anthony Peregrine told us about the new labelling law concerning restaurant food made on the premises:

… clearly this move is a good thing. Though the 175,000 figure includes bars, pubs, take-aways and even some bakeries, 4 per cent, if correct, remains unimpressive. It’s also a measure which the French catering business should have seen coming, following the flop of a similar, but voluntary, scheme introduced in 2014.

But it needs nuancing. French restaurants, like restaurants everywhere, have had a torrid time of late. Covid shut them down, staff subsequently proved unfindable, and prices have rocketed. An estimated 4,500 French restaurants shut down in 2022.

As one Languedoc restaurateur said: “We’re being strangled. The only way through for some is to buy in some dishes and trust that nobody minds. Which, generally, they don’t.”

Peregrine then listed ten categories in which France reigns supreme: truffles, oysters, cheese, choucroute, Charolais beef, mushrooms, foie gras, charcuterie, wine and bread.

I discovered the history of Camembert and Roquefort in his section on cheese:

Where to start? Camembert, obviously. South-east of Caen, the most famous rural hamlet in the world hosts tastings within a good little museum set-up. It explains, inter alia, how a priest on the run from the French Revolution taught local lass Marie Harel the rudiments of soft cheese making (maisonducamembert.com; £3.90). Then Roquefort, another titchy place (population 550), near Millau in the Aveyron. Legend suggests that a shepherd boy around there spotted a beautiful shepherdess, dumped his cheese sandwich in a damp cave and lit out to woo her. He failed, returned to his sandwich which, in the meantime had grown mouldy and, he discovered, delicious. Voilà Roquefort, still refined in those caves. Visit the Roquefort Société for £6.50 (roquefort-societe.com).

The bread section was also revealing:

This year’s best traditional Parisian baguette is made by Tharshan Selvarajah, a 37-year-old who arrived in France from Sri Lanka in 2006 – and is, apparently, allergic to flour. In the annual comp, last May, Mr Selvarajah’s bread topped 175 rivals. Among other perks, he now gets to deliver 30 baguettes a day to the Elysée Palace from his Au Levain des Pyrénées premises in the 20^th arrondissement (lepaindetharshan.fr).  Best bread nationally is from Gourmandises & Traditions in the village of Beaulieu, near Montpellier. I’ll say no more. There are already quite enough people ahead of me in the queue (boulangerie-gt.com).

Amazing.

Hazelnut shortage

I’d always thought that Italy and France produced the world’s hazelnuts.

Apparently not. It’s Turkey.

On October 10, The Times reported that 2023 was not a good year for one of my favourite nuts:

Christmas chocolate is in jeopardy … there is a looming hazelnut shortage. Crop levels of the favourite festive nut are lower than usual in Turkey, the world’s largest producer, due to bad weather and damage from wildfires. That means your Christmas choc — Ferrero Rocher or a bar of gianduja, depending on where you sit on the taste spectrum — is under threat.

Not to mention Nutella and imitations sold by other companies.

Oh, dear.

The article lists a number of other nuts that are equally ‘good for health’ but does not warn about the subsequent weight gain. It is all too easy to sit in front of the television with a bowl of nuts. I have been there before and gained weight that took a long time to shift because of the ageing process!

Drinking apple cider vinegar

This is another health experiment I tried after I lost weight after gorging on nuts: drinking apple cider vinegar.

Do not do it unless you have signs of diabetes. Well, I did not know that at the time. Mine was a short-lived experiment and I do not recommend it.

On October 28, The Telegraph posted a warning about drinking apple cider vinegar, but in the middle of the article:

… A summary of findings from a range of studies revealed a significant reduction in blood glucose and insulin in people who consumed vinegar compared with a control group. Again, it’s worth noting that this was vinegar in general, not specifically ACV, so it’s likely due to the acetic acid content rather than any special ACV magic.

Most of the research in this area has involved healthy volunteers, but there have been some small studies in people with type 2 diabetes that suggest that a shot of vinegar can be an effective way to reduce blood sugar following starchy carbs. So, does this mean everyone should be drinking vinegar shots with their meals? Crowe [Dr Tim Crowe, dietitian and host of the podcast Thinking Nutrition] has this advice, “No. If you don’t have diabetes, then your blood glucose is being regulated just fine.” Crowe goes on to advise that simply having a shot of vinegar wouldn’t be enough to counteract Type 2 diabetes. 

Crowe also says that he is not convinced that apple cider vinegar burns fat:

There have been several taste studies done that found that drinking vinegar in general can induce a slight feeling of nausea and a lessening of appetite. That does not negate that apple cider vinegar may have a small benefit on weight loss, but the mechanism here is that the ACV is probably making the person feel a little ill and reducing their appetite.

I can vouch for that.

Vinegar also has an adverse effect on teeth and prescription drugs:

Apart from the fact that drinking vinegar on its own is not exactly pleasant, there are some other drawbacks, as Crowe explains:

“ACV has a pH of around three, so it can dissolve the tooth structure when it comes into contact with the teeth. One study monitored dental erosion over 8 weeks and it went up 18 per cent in those taking vinegar. So, if you still want to take a daily shot of apple cider vinegar or any other type of vinegar, please dilute it first.”

Additionally, ACV can interact with certain drugs, such as diuretics and diabetes medications. If you are taking any medications, it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor first.

The most sensible way to ingest vinegar is via salad dressing:

… make up a tasty salad dressing by mixing it with olive oil, mustard, honey and dried herbs and enjoy it that way instead.

Eco-friendly restaurant charges

Moving on from health to restaurants, I was appalled to read this in The Telegraph on October 27, ‘Diners hit with “carbon footprint charge” on restaurant bills’:

Diners are being hit with carbon footprint charges on restaurant bills to “counterbalance the environmental impact” of meals.

Customers have reported charity donations for a scheme called Carbon Friendly Dining being added to restaurant cheques, on top of service fees.

The scheme, an initiative backed by retail consultancy Lightspeed, aims to tackle global warming by charging each cover £1.23 to pay for fruit trees to be planted in developing countries.

Carbon Friendly Dining’s website says the charge “helps counterbalance the environmental impact” of diners’ meals and “also help some of the poorest communities on the planet”. Celebrity chefs including Marco Pierre White and James Martin are among a number of restaurant owners to have signed up.

The cost of the donation is added on to the bill at the end of the meal. Diners can ask for it to be removed and staff are given instructions on how to take off the charge.

As with every other social cancer, this started in the United States:

The trend has previously caught on with climate-conscious eateries in California, with a similar scheme launched in 2018 adding a 1pc surcharge to bills to help farmers decarbonise.

Hilton hotels was also recently reported to have added a climate rating, similar to calorific ratings, to menus to let diners know the carbon impact of each dish.

It comes after this newspaper revealed how restaurants are increasingly adding optional charity donations onto bills, with psychology experts saying the trend was leaving people facing the prospect of social embarrassment when asking for the extra fees to be removed. 

A Carbon Friendly Dining spokesman said that the charges were “highly visible” and “completely optional” and that diners were given leaflets explaining the initiative’s goals.

I neither want nor need a lecture — or a ‘voluntary’ contribution to anything. I go to a restaurant to eat for enjoyment — and pay for the privilege of doing so.

One British diner told the Telegraph about his experience:

… one diner, who had noticed the additional fee when paying for a meal at a Cubitt House pub in London, said: “It really made me laugh when I spotted it, I thought adding 15pc service charge was cheeky but this takes the biscuit.

“If they are so concerned about the environment, why don’t they just stop selling meat? The sum was too small for me to bother complaining about but it’s very sneaky.”

Dozens of restaurants, pubs and hotels across the UK and internationally are listed as being signed up to the carbon offsetting donation on the scheme’s website …

Cubitt House was approached for comment.

Splitting the bill

On October 15, The Telegraph‘s veteran restaurant reviewer William Sitwell explained, ‘Why I’d rather pay the whole damn thing than split the restaurant bill’:

Hell is a busy place these days. But, wrote restaurateur James Chiavarini this week on Twitter: “Hell needs a special room for those who split the dinner bill item by item.”

And I couldn’t agree more. Indeed, if not a room then an annexe, an extension, or an entire wing. Chiavarini, whose family Italian restaurant Il Portico has traded in London’s Kensington for more than 50 years, posted his utterance having presided over yet another frustrating bill-splitting episode. 

“A table of 20 on a busy night,” he tells me, struggling to maintain his composure.

Interestingly, the restaurateur blames Tony Blair’s 2007 smoking ban, at which point diners traded in their cigarettes for more mobile phone interaction:

“I think I can trace this behaviour back to 2007,” says Chiavarini, “when the smoking ban came in and everyone starting bringing their phones to dinner. It changed human behaviour and micro bill splitting is a part of it.”

As he suggests, if you bring your phone into a restaurant you can’t leave the problems of the world on the other side of the restaurant door, so the romance of the dining experience lessens. People became more inward looking, more selfish, more mercurial. Bill-splitting goes mad.

And so it does.

Tony Blair has a lot for which to answer, the smoking ban being one of them that changed the UK forever — and not in a good way.

Smoking: Rishi Sunak as the heir to Blair

At the end of September, I about flipped when I saw on the news that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants to bring in an incremental New Zealand-style smoking ban.

As if that will stop our cost of living crisis or the migrant boats or the general social division that pervades the UK.

No, none of that is important to Rishi. Nor can he solve it, apparently, which is why he is turning his attention to cigarettes.

It should be noted that we are in the low double-digits when it comes to smoking rates, which explains why Britons have become fatter over the past 20 to 30 years.

On October 8, The Telegraph‘s Melanie McDonagh, a practising Catholic by the way, was equally appalled, contrasting Rishi’s faux conservativism with a freedom-loving artist in ‘Smoking David Hockney is a truer conservative than killjoy Rishi Sunak’:

If smoking has a bullish face, it is painter Sir David Hockney’s. From his farmstead in Normandy, the great man has surfaced to denounce Rishi Sunak’s proposal to ban the sale of cigarettes gradually.

Well done, that man.

Hockney gives his reasons for not giving up cigarettes anytime soon:

This, he says, “is just madness to me. I have smoked for 70 years. I started when I was 16 and I’m now 86 and I’m reasonably fine, thank you. I just love tobacco and I will go on smoking until I fall over”…

As he says defiantly, “Many artists have smoked. Picasso smoked and died at 91, Matisse smoked and died at 84 and Monet chain-smoked and died at 86. He smoked and painted at the same time. I can’t do that. I don’t smoke while I’m painting. I light a cigarette every 15 minutes when I stop to check what I’ve done … Why can’t Mr Sunak leave the smokers alone?”

I couldn’t agree more.

Ditto Melanie McDonagh:

Here, I say, is the authentic Conservative spirit. This is a man who has taken on board the health warnings and decided to ignore them all. He has calculated the risks, set them against the benefits and decided that he’s going to carry on with smoking because he likes it and it helps him paint …

When the New Zealand government, under bossy Jacinda Ardern, announced that it would be phasing out the sale of cigarettes, many Tories thought this is where progressive policies gets you. I wonder how they’re handling the prospect that a Tory PM will be introducing the same measure.

It’ll be an unwhipped free vote for Tory MPs – but will almost certainly be passed with the enthusiastic support of Labour. Sir Keir doesn’t need to worry about being called the nation’s nanny – the PM has taken that role on himself.

Compulsory clean living isn’t really what people vote Tory for, is it? I had reservations about Mr Sunak when, as chancellor, he aligned duty on drink in proportion to its strength, so port took a bigger hit than girly prosecco. But Mr Sunak doesn’t drink. Or smoke.

If he wants to be seen as the successor of Mrs Thatcher this is a funny route. She drank; Denis smoked. It’s come to a pretty pass when the heir of Churchill isn’t a Tory PM but David Hockney.

Yes, David Hockney, who probably never voted Conservative in his life, is more conservative than the PM, at least in this respect.

Countries that allow indoor smoking

On October 9, following on from the great Sunak proposal on banning cigarettes, The Telegraph‘s Chris Moss had an article in the Travel section, ‘The surprising countries where you can still smoke indoors’.

Bhutan is the biggest surprise of them all:

… not every country is clamping down; in some nations, the mood music around public smoking is reversing. In 2010 Bhutan was lauded all over the world for being the first country to ban tobacco sales and smoking in public places. The ban lasted for over a decade but, somewhat ironically, the Covid-19 pandemic “compelled policy makers to change course” and the sale of tobacco was legalised again. Dedicated rooms in bars and discotheques are once again free-to-smoke zones.

Excellent news. I wish Bhutan well in showing common sense.

Chris Moss summarises the varied — and surprising — smoking patchwork around the world:

Interestingly, there’s often no obvious connection between a country’s social values and its attitude to smoking. Albania completely bans smoking in bars and restaurants. Italy doesn’t. South Africa allows up to 25 per cent of a bar or restaurant to be set aside as a designated smoking area, though stricter laws are in the offing.

In Japanese restaurants and bars, smoking is permitted in all areas (although in practice many such places restrict or ban smoking). Danes can still enjoy a cigarette in smaller pubs, but most direct smokers to the streets. In Benin, meanwhile, smoking is banned in all indoor spaces.

In the US, the law changes from state to state, and can vary between neighbouring towns and districts. Economics as well as attitudes to freedom is a factor. Many Las Vegas casinos continue to allow smoking indoors. It’s also permitted in bars, taverns, and saloons where minors are prohibited or that don’t offer food service, in strip clubs and – as you’d expect in business-friendly America – on some floors at tobacco-related trade shows.

So common are smoking bans, these days, that it can be quite jarring when you walk into a restaurant on holiday and realise that smoking indoors is still permitted. I remember going to Porto about a decade ago, when smoking was already a social sin in the UK, and my astonishment on seeing a gutter below the counter in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant absolutely brim-full of cigarette butts.

Of course, an indoor smoking ban doesn’t always happen quite as planned. Some German states have banned smoking in bars, restaurants and sports stadiums, but according to the NGO coalition, the Smoke Free Partnership, compliance across the country is limited where laws do apply … 

If you are looking for a smoke-free holiday, South America is the destination for you. In December 2020, when Paraguay approved anti-smoking legislation, it became the first major region to achieve full smoke-free status. New Zealand is also on course to become an effective smoke-free nation. At the other end of the spectrum, the WHO calls out India, Tanzania and Indonesia as countries that only protect a small percentage of their populations with smoke-free zones.

Moss gave up smoking some time ago, but he still has fond memories of it:

As an ex-smoker I have to say I broadly – if begrudgingly – approve of the Sunak proposal, but can’t let go of some fond smoking memories. I still see two InterRail trips I took in the Eighties through the romantic haze of cigarette smoke on railway platforms and can still recall the pungent perfume of black tobacco – exotic, European, a bit dirty.

I started smoking in the Eighties, too. It brought me my best relationships, including marriage, and my best jobs.

With that, I’m off for a ciggie break. See you tomorrow.