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Press, 2 October 1979, Page 27

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SIN G A AS WE GO

Red wine combined with water and a secret ingredient is a fuel claimed to . have been used with great success by ' the French engineer Jean Chambrin. Tests V supervised by the French Automotive f Institute are said to show that the con- I coction has a performance equal to poor- " grade petrol.—News item. C One’s first reaction to this claim is y to treat it with some suspicion. , Anyone who has ever tried to set fire j to a bottle of red wine knows how j notoriously uncombustible the stuff is. Indeed, somewhat unworthily, one is , inclined on first reading this item to ’ | wonder whether it is based on no f sounder a foundation than an , immoderate consumption by M. Jean . Chambrin and the members of the i French Automotive Institute of the , substance they were testing. Say that the members of the , Institute were five in number, and that j they, together with M. Chambrin, over a period of a weed had inadvertently , and personally drunk the 600 litres of i Chateauneuf-du-Pape sent to them for ■ testing. They would almost be bound : to claim that the stuff worked as a j fuel in order to prevent themselves from being accused of theft.

However, taking the more charitable view, and assuming the claim to be well-founded, it is certainly good news for this country. Although our whites aren’t too bad, nevertheless with certain very rare honourable exceptions, we produce an enormous variety of the most undrinkable red wines in the world, apart from certain Mongolian vintages which are used for re-educating political prisoners. This huge quantity of red fluid can now, if M. Chambrin is correct, simply be taken off the wine market, adulterated with water and whatever the secret ingredient is, and pumped straight into the nation’s petrol tanks. Connoisseurship will doubtless spring up, with some motorists claiming that the Shell Cabernet Sauvigon gives you a superior performance on hills to the Mobil Private Tank Claret. And James Thurber’s classic putdown of wine snobbery, “It’s a naive domestic little Burgundy but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.” will be paraphrased by garage forecourt attendants to, "It’s a naive domestic little Burgundy but I think you'll be amused by its combustion.”