Who is this DIVA?

The yellow and pink of Black Tower’s new marketing campaign screams 80s, like a Van Halen solo played through a hot car stereo. She’s back, and like all of her contemporaries, she doesn’t look a day over 35. How does she do it?

The advert itself is 80s in an 80s revival sort-of way, the kind every generation since Gen X has played into, picking out the camp, glam, coked-up ostentatiousness of the decade and ignoring the ugly bits.

To wine lovers, Black Tower is often seen as one of the parts left forgotten. For my entire (short) career in wine, I have had to footnote my passion for German wine with “it’s nothing like Black Tower anymore!" No Liebfraumilch in my house!” Which is a shame, because a) Black Tower is Germany’s number one selling wine internationally, so to ignore it is to ignore a very huge group of wine drinkers around the world and b), Liebfraumilch was the very first wine I ever drank a whole bottle of. It did not start my lifelong love affair with German wine. It did, however, serve its purpose.

Sweet German wines like Hock and Riesling became illegal in most restaurants after the 80s ended, and anyone requesting one was cast into a ditch somewhere outside the city walls with the cabbage waste and the stray dogs. Black Tower’s sleek black evening attire and powdery cloud of power perfume was out, and the buttery Chards and wishy-washy Pinot Grigios became the accessories to be seen with. Black Tower, it seemed, had had her day — illustrious and beloved for a time, and then relegated to the corner shop shelves. But she’s had enough of the Chicken Wine stealing her limelight. No longer content to be a guilty pleasure, Black Tower has reinvented herself, and in the current place that supermarket wine is in, who can blame her? The time is right for a cheap, fruit-forward wine to undercut the overpriced, underwhelming celebrity wine market — and at £5.60 or therabouts in Morrisons, Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s, I can’t imagine why anyone would choose a Gary Barlow instead. Don’t be a snob. Think about the average person buying wine alongside their cat litter and dried penne. They want bang for their buck. Black Tower has the showbiz experience to offer that.

Ice in your wine

Ice in wine is becoming a *thing*. Don’t believe me? Do a couple of shifts in your local pub. Over the past year I’ve noticed more and more women (it has been primarily women) ordering white or rose wine and insisting on having ice in their glass. Perhaps it’s because they don’t really like the flavour, and the ice dulls it down. Perhaps pub fridges aren’t cold enough. Perhaps — and this is what I think — it reminds us of being on holiday. Oh god, I am doing everything I can at the moment to pretend I’m not really here. Aren’t you? The world is a nightmare, a giant morality eclipse, and if a little clinky-clinky in my glass helps lift me out of it even for a second, I am going to do it.

Black Tower is an ideal icy wine, because it’s heavy in syrupy flavours. And also because you don’t really want to taste it.

Diva down! The smell of honeydew melon attracts hoverflies and the taste of rotten pineapple is almost too much to bear. This is a white wine so fraudulently sweet and so oily, it could be a politician. Somehow, an afterbreath of alcohol carries through, ripe with apple VKs, and plaque.

This should be fizzy, if only to create a distraction. In a can, with bubbles, I could see me drinking this on a train, in a pinch. In its current state — flat, chewy (?) and soft, like a yellowing, wrinkled Granny Smith — I’m struggling to think of anyone thisa might appeal to. And if it appeals to you, here’s a tip: Lidl do a low-alcohol wine cooler made with tropical juice that’s similar, but much nicer. And about £3.

My ultimate review is that while Black Tower may have reinvented herself — and good for her! — she needs to do some serious inner work. To be a success in a world where the average drinker doesn’t care much for names, but knows exactly what they like, you can’t peddle the same old shite simply because it’s “fun” (read: alcoholic.) Non-alcoholic options are big business now, Black Tower. People know the difference between Chilean and New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs. Heritage Brand, you cannot keep making drinks like this and expect me not to take photos of them next to IBCs.

Beehiiv wouldn’t allow me to post additional photos here due to an unknown error, so if you’d like to see pictures of me “enjoying” this wine, head to my website.