Harry Eyres
How much wine writing has changed in the last 20, let alone 50 years! What distinguishes Charles Walter Berry's In Search of Wine (Sidgwick & Jackson, £13.95) from more modern works is not lack of scientific expertise, for Berry can be surprisingly technical when he wants, but a quality which I can only call innocence. Of course, when he conducted his extensive tour of the French vineyards in the autumn of 1934, he was something of a pioneer. The joys of exploration and discovery of the untrodden are communicated with an engaging freshness which does not conceal an immensely refined palate and consider- able commercial acumen. At the same time this record of a journey complete with motoring mishaps and wayside diversions has a wholly period charm, a mixture of Dornford Yates (only not so precious) and P.G. Wodehouse (but the sense of humour is more wayward — more like an English Jacques Tati). '
There is also a huge amount to learn in these 370 rambling pages about the vineyards, winemaking and vintages of the period. Berry had a very keen eye for things like soil, rootstocks and grape varieties. We may not all share his passion for still champagne, but it is fascinating to learn it was considered essential to bottle this wine in the month of February under a declining moon. He also explains more technological processes like the mithode champenoise (for the sparkling kind) and the manufacture of bottles with a lucidity which shows that he was, in reality, no Bertie Wooster.
Though Berry was actually a profession- al wine merchant, he never seems to be selling us anything, merely telling us what an interesting time he had and what a deep pleasure he obtained from the best wines (ordinary wines, it must be confessed, gave him little). His tasting notes do not offer fruit salads and spice racks; sometimes they consist merely of exclamation marks! At their best, though, they convey more genuine excitement in their reticence than the fashionable, explicit kind. Of a 1904 Corton Grancey he writes: 'Body — yes, but so soft that I thought all the body was a depth of elegance.' It may leave a lot to the imagination but you can sense the thrill.
If wine writing has become a kind of pornography (or put more politely, a sub- tle form of public relations), then two of its most artful modern practitioners are Hugh Johnson and Oz Clarke. Their styles are very different. Soft and hard would be putting it too crudely. If Johnson's prose has one thinking of back rooms in London clubs or moonlit conservatories, then Oz Clarke's writing, with its unmistakable reek of greasepaint, suggests the Folies Bergeres. Clarke is a skilful master of ceremonies, adept at swathing each wine in revealing descriptive robes and ushering it on to the stage with no lack of flounce and flourish. His latest offering, Sainsbury's Book of Wine (but no plugs for own labels), may superficially appear to resem- ble the same author's Wine Factfinder, but spot checks reveal that the area-by-area sections have been substantially rewritten. This is probably the best general introduc- tion to wine for, say, a bright teenager, currently available — and excellent value at £5.95.
Signs are that Hugh Johnson has been more content to rest on his laurels of late. The beautifully produced Wine Atlas of France (Mitchell Beazley, £16.95) is not that much more than a pull-out of the French sections from the World Wine Atlas. It includes touring maps and tourist information for the better-heeled wine traveller. The wine area sections have been updated by Hubrecht Duijker, a reliable wine writer but by no means such an elegant stylist as Johnson.
Duijker is also the author of The Wines of Rioja (Mitchell Beazley, £14.95), a useful guide to Spain's region for fine table wine which has enjoyed well-deserved success on the export markets in the last decade. Duijker goes through all the main bodegas giving helpful historical and technical in- formation, and occasionally over-polite tasting notes on the wines which make them sound as if they all taste rather the same. I suppose a lot (but not all) of Riojas, being blended wines, do taste similar. At least most are nicely mature and rounded.
Rioja is fashionable, but sweet dessert wines, on the whole, are not. Far too many people, in fact, are prejudiced against sweet wines, often for snobbish reasons. Stephen Brook's Liquid Gold (Constable, £14.95), a serious, thorough survey of the great sweet wines of Sauternes, the Loire, Ger- many, Austria, Hungary, Italy and the New World is a timely corrective. He has travelled widely in out-of-the-way places like Ste Croix de Mont and Tokay, tasting wines which when young often combine intense sweetness with rasping acidity, but develop with age into volup- tuous nectars. I would not like to speculate on the state of his teeth, but his prose-style seems to have become very dry, perhaps in self-defence. My only quibbles concern a surfeit of tasting notes and one or two questionable assertions, such as the state- ment that sweet wines made from over-ripe but not rotten grapes are always inferior to those made from grapes affected by botry- tis the noble rot. Not everyone in Germany would agree. 'The noble rot', incidentally, might have made a catchier title for this worthwhile book.
Finally I come to the wine guides which tell you exactly what to buy, where from and for how much. The newcomer this year in. what is becoming a crowded market within a market is The Wine-Buyer's Guide, 1988 (Dorling Kindersley, £10.95). This is, the work of Robert Parker, the former lawyer who has achieved guru status in America by awarding every wine a mark out of 100. People apparently ring up their merchant each month and order a dozen of Whatever Parker has rated most highly. Whether this system is computerised I don't know. If Parker started dropping his marks dramatically, it could trigger a wine market collapse. I wonder if the idea has occurred to him. . .
Previous page
