Is wine journalism a load of nonsense?

A SPAT on Twitter between wine journalists and wine merchants exposed the journalists to accusation of lazily filling their columns with lame reviews of favourite wines from The Wine Society. "To do otherwise would be perverse," one writer tweeted in defense of the 'what to drink and where to find it' dumbed-down approach to wine journalism. But if sensible wine writing resembles an internal memo for members of The Wine Society, what would "perverse" wine writing look like instead? Hugh Johnson wrote about wine with sensuous prose; Kermit Lynch wrote about the pleasures of wine and never engaged in contrived tasting notes.

Full article first published in The Connexion (October, 2013)

Photograph of Kermit Lynch by Peter DaSilva

Sniffing out the buffs from bluffers

IS the wine expert's “cigars, truffles and boysenberries” just a dazzling party trick? Do such words convey anything useful about a wine's flavour? The ability to match tasting notes with wines appears to be random, even among experienced drinkers, even when consutling their own notes! What is going on when someone descants about "rose petals on the nose" or even "violent tits"? Wine words say more about the price of a wine than its flavour. "Cigar" sounds expensive; "fruity" sounds cheap. Beyond showing appreciation, wInespeak is also a sign of logorrhoea, say experts. Ultimately, Bordeaux tastes more like Bordeaux than "truffles".

Full article first published in The Connexion (March, 2013)

'Tis the season of mystification not mellow fruitfulness

HYDROMETERS and spectrometers are on hand this month when winemakers trade farm overalls for white coats and morph from bacchanalian artisans into pointy-headed geeks. Cellars are transformed in a flurry, too. As suddenly and completely as Prohibition speakeasies flip-flopped from boozy saloons into respectable cabaret diners just before a police raid, tasting tables with half-finished bottles are replaced by a jumble of oenological paraphernalia and clean jars yeast, sugar and acid. Give winemakers a wide berth in September - they prefer to discuss specific gravity or the Higgs boson rather than mellow fruitfulness.

Full article first published in The Connexion (September, 2012).

Tasting tour can be dull marketing or a magical delight

WHEN I gate-crashed another party’s tour in the tasting room, during a visit of the Mondavi winery in Napa Valley, California, their guide, Pamela, primly told me to rejoin my group whose tour was just starting. She had sized me up as a drinker, ejecting me for a sobering 90-minute tour with the tasting room as the longed-for, penultimate step. Gatecrashing a tour in the tasting room undermines a winery's strategy to turn uneducated visitors into educated ones. Knowledge acquired on a tour becomes relevant to visitors, becomes part of their identity (no matter how temporarily); and identification leads to consumption, for those prepared to wait.

Full article first published in The Connexion (July, 2012)

Absolute mangoes 2.0

EVER since Jilly Goolden exclaimed “Absolute mangoes!” on the BBC’s Food and Drink programme, earning unintended titters, wine has had a communication problem. Web-friendly wine merchants say we should eschew overripe or unhinged tasting notes in favour of comparisons from unconventional sources, like music or film, as in: "I'm getting heaps of Shirley Bassey. Absolute Goldfinger." Malcolm Gluck was a pioneer of this sort of nonsense in The Guardian where a wine might be "a gruff old bruiser". The next time a wine-loving computer geek compares a Pinot Noir to Brad Pitt on the gangster film Snatch, just reply "Absolute mangoes!"

Full article first published in The Connexion (May, 2012)

A class of wine

IN THE SPIRIT of la rentrée scolaire, here is a class of wine. Pick a bottle. Inspect the label. If a year isn’t indicated, the wine was blended from several vintages. Pick another bottle. Who made, bottled and/or commercialised the wine: a merchant (négociant), a cooperative (cave coopérative), or an artisan (vigneron indépendant)? Preferably, the same person should make, bottle and commercialise a wine. If the wine has a screwcap or a plastic cork, make sure it is not over a year old. Decanting does not soften tannins, but it helps to dissipate sulphite aromas; so you should decant a young wine longer than an old wine. Now, pour the wine...

Full article first published in The Connexion (September 2011)