The World

Jesus drove the money-changers out of the temple. Now the World Economic Forum has driven the wine-tasters out of Davos. In previous years, one of the highlights of the forum was a small but spectacular tasting of fine wines. But last year Klaus Schwab, the forum’s mastermind, decided that guzzling first-growth clarets was an inappropriate way of celebrating the global economic meltdown - and the wine-tasting was cancelled. We all hoped that this was a temporary abberation, but apparently not. The new Puritanism is here to stay – Davos wine-tastings are off the menu until further notice.

But you cannot deter dedicated wine-tasters that easily. Last night a wine-tasting was organised by former Davos employees who have formed a new organisation called the Wine Forum. It took place in a conference room in an airport hotel in Zurich at 6pm – a time and a location that was specifically designed to intercept delegates en route to Davos.

Jancis Robinson of the FT was mistress-of-ceremonies and the wines were provided by Krug, and Chateaus Cheval Blanc and Yquem. One of the malign results of globalisation is that these wines, which were once affordable to the likes of me, are now global brands cherished by the super-rich and so mesmerisingly expensive. I’ve never understood why the anti-globalisation movement doesn’t make more of this issue. The 1959 Chateau Yquem that we tasted last night now sells for about £1600 a bottle – each gulp that I took would have made a small contribution to paying off my mortgage. The Cheval Blanc 1998 is about £400 a bottle.

The event last night involved sampling five different vintages from each chateau. This is what is known as a “vertical tasting”, although I’m not quite sure why, since if you actually finished each glass, you are much more likely to end up horizontal. I felt obliged to do my best to drink every last drop, since it seemed kind of immoral to hurl hundreds of pounds worth of wine down the sink. Then, at 10pm, I staggered onto the coach for the long and winding drive to Davos, arriving around one in the morning.

Under the circumstances, I feel remarkably perky. This morning I went to a really good session on geo-politics, which did what Davos does so well – bring together participants from all over the world; in this case from Beijing, Moscow, London, Cairo, Harvard, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now I am off to a lunch with George Soros. This evening, I am meant to be moderating a dinner debate called “From Piracy to Pandemics – From Past to Present Dangers”, which seems to have been organised by somebody with a taste for alliteration. It says that the dress code is “smart casual”, but I think it would be more fun if the participants could be persuaded to come in fancy dress. Somebody should come dressed as a pirate; somebody else could come as a pig with flu. Now that the wine-tasting is no more, we need to think of new ways of enlivening Davos.