Californian wines
Sir: Professor Geoffrey Wagner's lamentations (July 27) about the price of claret in the US might arouse more sympathy did he seem to care more about wine. The 1964 vintage was very uneven and, if he must keep his bottles in a centrally-heated, air-conditioned flat, then even a few months in this atmosphere would make the finest Wines take on that "cooked" taste that such conditions produce. As for Batailley being classed as an "odd" Pauillac, Duhart-Milon and Lynch-Bages as "minor names" and La Lagune (the 1966, too!) as "really drinkable, if littleknown"; a European is tempted, in the face of such ignorance of the classic growths of the Medoc, to retort that it has been the tendency of American buyers to "drink the label" that has forced up the prices of many French wines.
He is incomprehensible to me when he says "Geographical appellations really don't apply in America as in a specialised wine country like France." The soil and the climate affect what the grape or grapes yield in the form of wine, and, America being of greater size than France, I should have thought that it was of even greater interest to know the region from which a wine comes. True, American wine establishments produce ranges of different wines, but it is not just the "house style" that makes their products vary.
Those whose judgement I respect who have explored the US wines report favourably and the few that do come to the UK are pleasant if expensive on account of the distance they have to travel. But it seems an oddly biased attitude to assert that "generic American jug wine" (I do not know what this term means, but assume it to imply ordinary character) . . "is undoubtedly superior to comparably priced vin du pays from France." One of the civi'lising Influences of wine is that love of it enables one to differ without acrimony as•.to what is enjoyed: Just because Professor Wagner thinks that American wines are more enjoyable and better value than French wines, need he so decry the latter? Taste being such a personal thing, it is probably fair to assume that there are about as many indifferent American 'ordinary' wines as thank heaven there are first-rate French vins du pays. Let wine-lovers devote their energies to what is good, wherever it is made.
Pamela Vandyke Price 8 Queens Gate, London SW7
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