You’re alone in a rented apartment in some anonymous European city. The kind with white walls, bad art, and a couch that’s seen things. It’s late. The bottle of supermarket red you grabbed “just to have something” is already half gone. You flick on the TV. And there it is: a cooking show. Studio lights, a grinning host, some poor bastard of a celebrity chef pretending they’re thrilled to be there, and—of course—wine.

In Europe, this isn’t just background noise. This is culture. This is propaganda. This is seduction. This is a continent quietly teaching you what to drink, how to drink, and what it means when you do.

Let’s talk about wine and television cooking shows in Europe—the love story, the hustle, and the quiet education happening in millions of living rooms, every damn night.

How We Went From Table Wine to TV Wine

Wine in Europe used to be like tap water. On the table, all the time. No one talked about it. Nobody swirled it, sniffed it, or described it as “playful yet brooding” like some emotionally stunted actor. You drank it because that’s what you did. It was part of the meal, part of the day, part of being alive.

Then television got involved.

First came the old-school shows: serious men in jackets, copper pots, and a quiet glass of red lurking on the edge of the cutting board. They didn’t talk about it much. It was just there, like gravity. But that quiet glass did something important: it told you that real cooking—grown-up cooking—involved wine. Not as an afterthought, not as decoration. As a given.

Fast forward a few decades. Now you’ve got hosts pouring Prosecco into everything that doesn’t move, British chefs banging on about “a nice Chianti” for your ragù, French presenters treating a glass of Burgundy like a religious relic, and Spanish cooking shows where a bottle of Rioja is as essential as salt.

TV turned wine from a silent partner into a co-star.

Britain: Where Wine Went from Snobbery to Saturday Night

The UK is a weird place for wine. They don’t really make much of it (yes, English sparkling, I see you), but they drink a hell of a lot of it. And British TV cooking shows are a big reason why so many people who grew up on lager and instant coffee now know what Malbec is.

On British screens, you’ve got:

• The polished stuff: shows where a host in a pressed shirt tells you to grab “a decent bottle of red” for your stew. They’re careful, they’re educational, they’re trying to make wine less scary.
• The fun chaos: shows where the wine is part of the entertainment. Hosts cooking with a glass always in hand, “accidentally” over-pouring, joking about not wasting the leftovers in the pan. It’s not reverent. It’s not serious. It’s accessible.

This shift matters. For a long time, wine in Britain was a class marker. Ordering Bordeaux meant you were “in the know,” or at least wanted people to think you were. TV cooking shows chipped away at that. When you see a cheeky, sweary chef on prime time throwing a glug of red into a pan and taking a swig from the same bottle, it sends a message: this isn’t just for people who own country houses and say “supper.”

It’s for you. On your crappy sofa. Eating pasta out of a bowl. With a ten-quid bottle from the supermarket.

France: Where Wine Is the Air They Breathe

In France, wine doesn’t need to be explained. It’s assumed. It’s like talking about oxygen. Or bread.

French cooking shows treat wine like an old friend who doesn’t need an introduction. They’ll say:

“On va prendre un petit rouge du coin”
(“We’ll grab a little local red.”)

And that’s it. No sermon. No tasting notes. Just: red. Local. Obviously it’s good.

You’ll see:

• A chef in Lyon tossing a splash of Beaujolais into a pan of lardons and onions, not once mentioning the grape, the vintage, or the producer.
• A host telling you to use “un bon vin blanc sec” for your fish—“a good dry white”—and trusting you to figure it out at your local caviste.
• Wine on the table during the tasting at the end, the way it would be if you were actually there. No one announcing, “Now we’re pairing this with…”

French TV cooking doesn’t have to sell wine. It just shows it. In the background, in the glass, in the pan. It’s a quiet masterclass in normalization: this is how you live. This is how you eat. This is how you drink.

And that’s powerful. Because you’re not being taught. You’re being absorbed into a worldview.

Italy: Wine as Family, Gesture, and Background Music

Italian cooking shows are less about recipes and more about vibes. A grandmother in Emilia-Romagna rolling pasta at a table that’s seen five generations. A guy in a too-tight shirt drizzling olive oil like he’s blessing the dish. And always, somewhere in the frame: wine.

In Italy on TV:

• Wine is part of the mise en scène: a carafe of red on the table, a glass of white perched next to a plate of fried anchovies, a bottle of Lambrusco sweating in the background.
• Wine is rarely over-explained: you’ll hear “un buon rosso” or “un bianco fresco” more than “Sangiovese from this specific hillside at this specific altitude.”
• Wine is emotional: it’s about “what my grandfather drank,” “what we always have on Sundays,” “what you drink with this, because that’s how we do it here.”

Italian TV doesn’t treat wine as a luxury good. It treats it as a birthright, a habit, a shared memory. The cooking shows become a kind of televised nonna, telling you—without quite saying it—how to live a little better, slower, more rooted. And wine is always there, nodding along.

Spain: Tapas, Rioja, and the Joy of the Pour

Spain’s food television is like its bars: noisy, generous, unpretentious. You get a lot of shouting, a lot of olive oil, and a lot of wine that doesn’t apologize for being simple and damn drinkable.

On Spanish cooking shows, you’ll see:

• Chefs cooking with wine more than talking about it: sherry in the pan for clams, white wine for fish, red for stews.
• Hosts saying “un vino joven” (a young wine) or “una copita de fino” (a little glass of fino) like they’re asking you to grab the salt.
• Wine as part of the social scene: the post-cooking tasting is often basically a bar table—small plates, several glasses, lots of talking over each other.

And there’s an important detail: Spanish TV often shows regional wines with regional dishes. Albariño with Galician seafood. Txakoli with pintxos in the Basque Country. Cava with Catalan snacks. It subtly teaches you that wine isn’t just “red or white”—it’s where you are, who you’re with, and what’s on the table.

The Rise of the Wine “Expert” on Screen

Of course, once TV producers realized wine could be content, not just a prop, the “expert” appeared.

Now you’ve got:

• Sommeliers popping in for segments to recommend “affordable but interesting” bottles.
• Wine-focused episodes where the cooking takes a back seat and the real star is the vineyard footage—golden light, hands on grapes, barrels in the cellar like some monk’s wet dream.
• Travel–cooking hybrids where a chef wanders through European wine regions, pretending they just “stumbled upon” this perfect little winery that just happens to have the label facing the camera.

Sometimes this is useful. You learn that you don’t need to spend a fortune to drink well. You hear that there’s life beyond Pinot Grigio and supermarket Merlot. You see real people making real wine in places that aren’t on the tourist map.

Sometimes it’s bullshit: a glorified commercial dressed up as authenticity. The host sighing over a glass like they’re having a religious experience, while a discreet logo glows in the corner of the screen.

But even then, you’re learning something: that wine is worth talking about. Worth paying attention to. Worth more than just “red with meat, white with fish.”

Product Placement, Quiet Persuasion, and the Supermarket Aisle

A lot of what happens with wine on European cooking shows is about moving product.

• That bottle on the counter with the label turned just-so? Someone paid for that.
• That recurring “house wine” the host keeps recommending? There’s a contract somewhere.
• That sudden fascination with a specific region that just launched a new marketing campaign? Not a coincidence.

But here’s the twist: even as they sell to you, they’re also educating you. You start recognizing grape names. You start noticing that “DOC,” “AOC,” “DO” on labels might actually mean something. You remember that the chef used “dry white” for fish, and you find yourself flipping the bottle to read the back label for clues.

The supermarket aisle becomes less of a panic attack and more of a scavenger hunt.

TV doesn’t just sell wine. It shapes what people think wine is.

The Good, the Bad, and the Drunk

Is this all good? No. Is it all bad? Also no.

The good:

• Wine is less intimidating.
• People experiment more.
• Regional European wines that used to be local secrets—Portuguese Vinho Verde, Sicilian Nero d’Avola, Austrian Grüner Veltliner—get screen time and, suddenly, global demand.
• Food and wine get treated as a pair, not separate hobbies.

The bad:

• It can glamorize overconsumption. When every host is constantly topping off their glass, it sends a message.
• It can flatten complex wine cultures into clichés: Italy = Chianti, Spain = Rioja, France = Bordeaux, Germany = Riesling. That’s like saying Europe is just Paris, Rome, and a beach in Spain.
• It can turn wine into another lifestyle accessory, something you buy to feel like the people on screen, not because you actually like it.

But that’s television. It simplifies. It sells. It packages.

What You Really Learn Watching All This

You might think you’re just zoning out in front of a cooking show. But if you watch enough European food TV, you pick up a few deeper truths:

1. Wine is a language of place.
   Every time a chef says “we always drink this with that,” they’re telling you how a culture understands itself.

So What Do You Do With All This?

Next time you’re in Europe, or just watching it from your couch:

• When a chef says “a dry white wine,” don’t panic. Grab something dry and white. Taste it before it hits the pan.
• When a host casually mentions a region—Loire, Penedès, Piedmont—make a note. Try a bottle from there next time you’re shopping.
• When you see wine used like seasoning, not like a holy relic, pay attention. That’s closer to how it was meant to be.

And if you find yourself in some anonymous rental at midnight, with a cheap bottle and a rerun of a cooking show in a language you barely understand, lean into it. Let the sound of pots clanging and corks popping wash over you. Watch how they pour. When they drink. What they drink with what.

Because buried under the studio lights and the sponsorship deals, there’s something stubborn and real: a very old continent, still teaching you—through a flickering screen—how to sit down, shut up for a second, and enjoy a glass of wine with your food like a human being.

In a world that’s increasingly fake, curated, and algorithm-driven, that simple act—wine, food, table—might be the most honest thing left on television.