A break of four weeks is meant to set one up to attack the workload with renewed dedication and vigour. What it has done for me is to make me even more aware of just how incredibly lucky I am to be a wine writer.
The conventional wine writer’s article about his, or in Britain often her, work is to bemoan our lot. Gosh, we have to get up quite early you know, and occasionally taste tough young wines in cold cellars before nine o’clock in the morning. And, would you believe it, we often have to unpack large cartons full of free bottles of wine? You would hardly believe how tiresome all those couriers and polystyrene can be, my dear.
I have written this sort of stuff in my time but I am increasingly aware that this is just a smokescreen. We wine writers are deeply guilty about what a privileged life we lead and need to trot out these whinges to a) mitigate the guilt and b) put off as many would-be recruits to our ranks as possible. Already the correspondence columns of the wine trade journals (of which Off-Licence News is surely the most endearingly named) carry impassioned pleas from younger wine writers about how difficult it is to dislodge us old timers from our cosy niches in the national press.
Well is it surprising that we are unwilling to give up one of the very few jobs which pays us to eat, drink and travel to some of the most beautiful places in the world? I am smug enough to feel sorry for those whose business travel is a roster of day trips to financial capitals or production centres. Wine is almost inevitably made in the middle of the countryside and in agreeably temperate climates. We substitute the Médoc for Manchester, the sylvan setting of Franken for Frankfurt and the Napa Valley for Silicon Valley.
Yes we have deadlines to meet, but the subject is so fascinating, and changes with every season, every new vineyard owner, every new winemaking technique, that there is never a shortage of material. And, unlike political or financial journalists for example, we are in the fortunate position of being able simply to broadcast our own opinions without fear of writs and libel laws or the responsibility of those opinions’ carrying any really serious weight. The only recent entanglements of the law and wine writing that I can think of are the wrath of the growers of Beaujolais last year when someone in a local Lyons newspaper described their wines as merde (a bit strong perhaps) and Alexandre Comte de Lur Saluces’ latest libel action, this time against a new book Noble Rot: A Bordeaux Wine Revolution which he reckons impugns him in its account of his attempts to stop LVMH’s acquisition of his family’s famous Château d’Yquem in Sauternes (see purple prose).
Of course we wine writers think we are important. It is difficult for anyone to write a single paragraph for publication without thinking that it matters in some way. But we certainly over-estimate our importance – partly because, as in other fields, it is in the interests of producers and retailers to flatter us and make us think that a recommendation from us will make all the difference to their fortunes. I occasionally receive feedback about the results of what I write but I would truthfully rather write in isolation, saying what I think rather than having to consider the consequences of either inflating or diminishing a producer’s reputation, or whether supply matches demand for the wine I am raving about.
I know that it is extremely frustrating for readers not to be able to find recommended wines, but if the business of making recommendations becomes the result of tight-knit co-operation between writer and retailer, it becomes much more difficult to maintain the necessary distance from, and independence of, what we write about.
When it comes to rating very young, very high-profile wines such as the en primeur offerings from Bordeaux and Burgundy, then there can be very obvious chains of cause and effect between wine writers’ assessments and demand, and therefore wine prices. America’s most influential wine critic Robert Parker initiated this trend with his ratings out of 100 for individual wines and now many a proprietor waits for the Parker score before pricing that year’s offering, which must be a heavy weight to bear. It now seems inevitable that we all rate young wines in this way. I see my scores out of 20 taken off my purple pages and used by merchants to promote their en primeur offers – although only of wines I actually like, of course. Buyer beware selective quotation.
Of course we receive feedback from those who feel their wines have been underrated, but it is difficult to retract what was an honest account of an interaction between a bottle long exhausted and a palate. Bottles vary however, as I found recently when re-tasting a second bottle of a well-known Priorat, Clos Mogador 2001 which seemed so much more impressive than the first (see inside information). Such marked disparities are relatively rare but should be enough to make us all wary of making definitive pronouncements.
Talking of bottles and tastings, these are the tools of our trade. Just as professional literary critics must end up with far more books than they need or want, so we wine writers are awash with wine – and not necessarily wine that we fusspots actually want to drink. But a bottle opened is of course a very different proposition from a book flicked through. Most of us have friends and neighbours who willingly absorb our surplus, though I do worry about the effect of handing over dozens of open, almost-full bottles at a time to one eager individual. But more even rationing could become a fulltime job in itself.
If the free samples and the excuse to roam wine regions are the most obvious perks, there is another important social one. I am often asked, particularly since I am married to someone who is both a restaurant critic and a very good cook, “aren’t people scared to invite you to dinner?” Perhaps. I do not know, since no-one ever calls to say they would have invited us round but decided against it on the grounds of imagined gastronomic inferiority. What I do know is that, to my delight, those who do invite us to eat tend to open their best bottles for us. If they have been saving a bottle of Penfolds Grange or Dom Pérignon for an occasion that warrants it, they delightfully often seem to abandon the idea of the suitable occasion in favour of a suitable person, me. I suppose they think that at least I will fully appreciate that special wine. And they are absolutely right.
I can hardly believe my good fortune. Now, back to the coalface of corks to be pulled.
