Books, books, books

The nightstand beside my bed has a dozen or so unread or partially read books on wine. It’s a nightly reminder that I need to find the time to read more and also blog about what I read. So……

The books include Alice Feiring’s “The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization” (Harcourt Inc., 2008) which I have been reading on and off (mostly off) for at least 18 months, although it seems like forever and I’m only at page 113 out of 262. Apart from being the most uninspiring book I have ever read, I cannot fathom the role of love in this attempt at autobiography. How can someone be so negative about wine and life? Maybe the ending is uplifting but I’m not sure I have the patience (or the life span!) to keep reading till then.

In contrast Benjamin Wallace’s “The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine”(Crown Publishers, New York. 2008) is an outstanding work. Focusing on the infamous Hardy Rodenstock (aka Meinhard Goerke ) and his supposed discovery of bottles of Bordeaux wine bearing the inscription “Th.J.”, the initials of Thomas Jefferson; third President of the United States and arguably America’s first wine connoisseur. Wallace’s writing style highlights the intrigue that this story has engendered in wine collectors and those who like a good detective story. Even so, the final chapters of this saga have yet to be written from the lawsuits that billionaire Bill Koch has brought against those who sold him fake bottles of wine (see Dec. 15, 2009 issue of “Wine Spectator”). Perhaps the most famous example of “caveat emptor” (let the buyer beware), “The Billionaire’s Vinegar” might also be considered an example of “a fool and his money are soon parted”. And it seems there were (are still) lots of wine collectors who have spent extraordinary amounts of money to secure what must have appeared at the time to be true rarities in the world of wine and in the case of the “Th.J.” engraved bottles, American history. Unfortunately many such bottles have identified as fakes or have questionable provenance. But the real fools have to be Hardy Rodenstock (aka Meinhard Goerke ) and auctioneer Michael Broadbent of Christie’s. It pains me to paint Broadbent in this way as I have held him high regard for decades but his failures only exacerbated Rodenstock’s bravado; note: I do not believe that Broadbent colluded with Rodenstock only that he could have investigated the “Th.J.” bottles more thoroughly. Its possible that Rodenstock might have fooled everyone if those bottles had not been labeled so. But by highlighting the possibility that Jefferson owned them he picked on the wrong individual because it is well know that Jefferson recorded almost every moment of his life and especially his daily expenses. Thus it would have taken little effort for Broadbent (or Rodenstock!) to enquire as to the authenticity of these bottles from the researchers at Monticello (Jefferson’s estate located in Charlottesville, Virginia). As it was, a report (dated December 12, 1985) on that possibility was completed by Lucia Goodwin Stanton (then director of research at Monticello) only a week after the auction of the first of the “Th.J.” bottles on Dec. 5, 1985.

Stanton’s report examining whether a bottle of Chateau Lafite 1787 bearing the initials “Th.J” was the property of Thomas Jefferson has been produced without change as Appendix A (page 313) in James Gabler’s “An Evening with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson: Dinner, Wine, and Conversation" (Bacchus Press, Palm Beach, Florida. 2006). Gabler himself discusses the “Th.J.” bottles with Jefferson himself (pages 125-131) in this imaginary dinner with Jefferson and Franklin using much of the information that Stanton obtained from Jefferson’s own recording of his life. The wealth of information available makes in highly unlikely that Jefferson ever purchased 1787 Lafite, let alone had the bottles engraved.

Gabler’s book itself in an instructive look at how two of the United States earliest aficionados of wine viewed wine and the world during their time. Admittedly the conversations recorded in the book are mostly from Gabler’s imagination but they are based on historical fact. The book can be hard going because it is one continuous discourse that lacks the relief that chapters would bring. In contrast his earlier book “Passions : The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson” (Bacchus Press, Baltimore, Maryland. 1995) is an entertaining and enlightening account of Jefferson’s travels through Europe and especially France’s wine regions of Burgundy, Rhone Valley, Bordeaux and Champagne, among others. Also included in the book is a wonderful wine Glossary together with pronunciations (page 303). This is a book that I highly recommend if you want to glimpse one wine life during that period.

How To Taste Wine

Before I get into vivid, mouthwatering descriptions of some of the wines we tasted during our trip to Australia I thought I would share a post or two on a few wine related gems from downunder. The first involves a little book that I purchased at Shaw Vineyard Estate. The Shaw Vineyard estate is at Murrumbateman, about 30 km north of Canberra and is part of the Canberra wine region. It is also one of those wineries that bears a unfortunate resemblance to Frass Canyon winery of Sideways fame. Lots of glitz and kitsch but not much personality. We were there on the weekend when the region’s wineries have their Wine Roses and all that Jazz celebration, and so Shaw had a quartet playing right in the packed cellar door which is also attached to a restaurant that was full of noisy patrons. Not exactly ideal circumstances when it comes to a quiet taste of a few wines.

So after the mad scramble to get a little taste of Riesling we amused ourselves by looking over the merchandise that was for sale. Hidden way at the end of the counter in the cellar door, almost out of sight was a little display of books titled “Len Evans – How to taste wine”. You little beauty, a small treatise by the man Hugh Johnson described as “the finest judge of wine I know”. This should be full of invaluable tidbits of tasting lore. And it is, as long as you are not expecting enlightenment on the mechanics and physiology of wine tasting. The advice is of a different kind. Its the wisdom of a sage among wine judges.

“How to taste wine” was written just before Len Evans died unexpectedly in 2006, the very last paragraph of the text, in a section called Reflections, sums up his philosophy of wine, and so I quote it verbatim.

“What I really wanted was to sit at the foot of a great palate, the most
knowledgeable wine guru, the ultimate taster. Unfortunately there was no such
person around at that time, nor is there one today. All one may do is scratch a
bit here and scratch a bit there, trying to put enough together to achieve some
sort of understanding of this most wondrous of drinks. And I do hope some of the
above helps, even if all it does is open some minds to the possibilities of the
subject. “

There is, of course, more in this little book. Evans devotes 30 pages to the assessment of wine, covering the areas of color, nose, entry, middle palate, after palate and finish. But there is no technical detail, just observations gleaned from 30 plus years as a wine judge. His strongest recommendation? Smell a wine deeply for "a great deal of what is to be learnt of any wine is there, 'on the nose' ". Perhaps paradoxically Evans is not a devotee of describing the aroma/bouquet of wine. His explanation is that he has “neither the olfactory range or the inclination” to adopt “the endless wine vocabulary used overseas”. To Evans “wine smells of itself”. Perhaps such an explanation seems unsatisfactory given his extraordinary tasting ability but Evans is no scientist, his strength lay in an ability to compare and contrast wines, remembering the experience more viscerally than cerebrally.

He is also not above poking a few jabs at the insularity of wine critics/judges, especially from the States. You know the ones, they “start writing for newspapers and magazines and appear on TV: they get feted a little, and in no time they’re all experts. We’ve had lots of them over here to judge different shows and some of them, to be frank, are quire ordinary. They may be alright when they can read the labels but when it’s blind they’ve made some shocking mistakes.” Ouch. But then I wouldn’t expect anything else but the unpalatable truth from Len Evans.

The one semi-technical contribution in this little book is described in the section called An Indulgence. Its Evans’ attempt to depict the structure of individual wines in a graphic format. Each graph is broken into nose, entry, middle palate, after palate and finish – the aspect of tasting described earlier in the book. The height of the line and the width of each segment conveys the impact of the wine. If necessary the intensity can be displayed by the width of the line and the density by dots of varying size. It looks somewhat clumsy and it is difficult to appreciate how a single line contains the many dimensions of a wine. But then it comes from the mind of a true individual in the world of wine. Afterall who else could pen a "Theory of capacity"?

How To Taste Wine (paperback) by Len Evans, 112 pages, Barbara Beckett Publishing, Paddington, Australia (2007) $19.95AUD.

The Art of Decanting

As a prelude to a summary of the results of The Great Decanting Experiment I thought it might be prudent to review the only book I can find that, at least according to it’s title, is devoted to the decanting of wine.

Written by Sandra Jordan, of Jordan Vineyard and Winery, The Art of Decanting: Bringing wine to life is an extremely well presented volume. Chapters cover everything from the historical aspects of wine storage, to corkscrews, wine glasses, wine appreciation, and even a menu for a dinner to show off your ability to decant your favorite wines. The images, although a little too close to commercial photography, are nonetheless eye catching. I found myself impatiently reading the text just to get to the next page to see what other images of wine glasses, corkscrews and additional accoutrements of wine tasting might be found there. Its no coincidence that the title includes the word art, nor is it coincidence that a number of the photographs are less than subtle in their advertising of Jordan wines.

Yes, this is one of those books that you do read for the pictures! And that is a problem because there is precious little examination of why wines should be decanted and what happens when wines are decanted. There is simply no support provided for dogmatic statements such as “ In truth, the beneficial influence of air upon young reds may be the closest thing to certainty in the world of decanting. In all other matters – particularly in those pertaining to treasured library wines – the experts continue to engage in fierce debate and friendly disagreement.” Or “ For a young wine(a red one to five years old), however, consider decanting one to three hours before your dinner to allow more oxygen to reach the wine, unleash the flavors, and smooth out the texture. In short, some patience, and a good decanter can improve the flavor and bouquet of a rough young red immeasurably.”

But is all this exposure to air a good thing? The wonders that oxygen will bring to a young wine are seemingly fraught with danger for we are told that in decanting a wine it should not be allowed to splash into the decanter lest it “tire”. And please don’t “shake the decanter to more fully aerate the wine – a controversial move, to put it mildly” as Hugh Johnson, if he is present, is likely to faint.

No, this is not a book for those looking for knowledge on the benefits (or otherwise) that aeration will bring to wine. It is chock full of the art of decanting, thou.

The Art of Decanting: Bringing Wine to Life (Hardcover) by Sandra Jordan with Lindsey Lee Johnson. 132 pages, Publisher: Chronicle Books (Oct. 1, 2006). $12.71USD.

Wine Odyssey – a year of wine, food and travel

There are not many individuals who live the vinous existence enjoyed by Australia’s James Halliday. That is why I was pleased to find his Wine Odyssey – a year of wine, food and travel. Written in a diary-like format, the book chronicles Halliday’s experiences in the world of wine for 2002. And when I say world, I mean that Halliday does get about. He is more than just an acknowledged expert on Australian wines, his expertise as a critic, judge and just plain wine expert is sought in the New World and Old World alike.

Halliday describes himself as a workaholic in the first sentence of the Prologue, by the end of the book that is more than believable. I was convinced the first time we learn that it is not uncommon for his wife to meet him at Melbourne airport with fresh clothes so that he can jet off to judge yet another Wine Show, or speak at a wine symposium. All of this is done against the backdrop of consulting for Coldstream Hills Winery (which Halliday and his wife Suzanne sold to Southcorp in 1996), tasting through thousands of Australian wines for his annual Wine Companion and selecting the annual Top 100 wines for the Weekend Australian. And these are just a few of the regular events that occupy his time during the year.

A diary should be a personal account of the life of the writer, even if it is only a slice of that life, as is the case with Halliday’s Odyssey. While this book does document Halliday’s life on an almost daily basis it is not cluttered with the personal detritus that some writers might be tempted to include, and some readers may be expecting! Instead it is well tempered with vinous experiences that the wine aficionado will appreciate. The most telling, at least for me, is a reminiscence of a visit, with his wife Suzanne, to France in the early 1980’s. At La Pyramide (a restaurant) in Vienne he seeks out wines of his birth year. One is a 1938 Romanée-Conti. I’ll let Halliday tell of the experience.

“As Louis, the venerable sommelier, teased the cork out of the bottle with his splayed fingers, a sixth sense warned me that something extraordinary was about to happen. As I smelt the wine he poured for my approval, Suzanne said, ‘Why are you crying?’ My first reaction was to indignantly deny that I was doing any such thing, but then I realized that tears were indeed trickling down my cheeks. It was an entirely involuntary reaction to the sheer perfection of the wine.”

If that little anecdote does not give some insight into the love that Halliday has for the liquid that he has devoted his life to, then I clearly don’t have the measure of the man.

For the less emotional, but still voyeuristic, purists there is the description of the purchase and consumption of a double magnum of 1865 Chateau Lafite, as well as 77 vintages of Chateau Latour from 1920 to 2000. Another highlight are the photographs that add visual detail to many of Halliday's exploits, all snapped by the author. There is much to recommend this excellent little book, I mean diary.

Wine Odyssey: A year of wine, food and travel (Paperback) by James Halliday, 304 pages, HarperCollinsPublishers PTY Limited (May 1, 2004). $20.95USD

A Very Good Year
There is a scene in the fictional movie Sideways in which Maya, the female lead, defines her character through her thoughts on wine. She says “I like to think about the life of wine, how it’s a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing……..what the weather was like. I think about all those people who tended and picked the grapes, and if its an old wine, how some of them must be dead by now……..”. It’s a moving personalization of one individual’s intimacy with the life of wine. It is also a rare display of appreciation because the majority of wine lovers drink wine for the sensory and hedonistic pleasures it provides. Very few think about what it took to get the wine into the bottle they are pouring and enjoying.

This is not true of Mike Weiss, or perhaps more correctly his wife Carole Rafferty who asked “Did you ever think about all that goes into a bottle of wine?” From that simple question came a multipart series in the San Francisco Chronicle and then a book by Weiss. Entitled “A Very Good Year” this rather extraordinary volume traces the life of a California wine from vine to table. The wine is the 2002 Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc and for those interested in a general overview of the aspects of vineyard care and winemaking that produced this wine there is sufficient detail scattered among the 280 or so pages to hold one’s interest. And it is useful knowledge for those wanting to lean about how a wine is made, but “A Very Good Year” is more than about making wine.

Fermenting along with the wine are a number of other stories. Unintended as they may be it is the contrasts that draw you into this book and keep you reading page after page. There is, of course, The Story. It can make or break a wine and the Caranos have their story. More than just a family with wealth from Reno gaming looking to own a bit of Sonoma, there is a passion to succeed, to produce quality wine. Flip the gaming token and you have their Mexican vineyard workers laboring with their own desire to succeed for their families a distant border away. Weiss’s depiction of the lives of the vineyard workers and their families is the most vivid story behind California wine. And even then he has probably only scratched the surface.

The making of the 2002 Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc is also about underlying personality clashes, a protective winery owner criticized for his favoritism, a wine maker with an almost paranoid approach to his craft that is not shared by the junior staff, and a marketing maven with a monster ego. There is even a Deep Cork to provide the odd anonymous insight or two. And, perhaps ironically, there is also human birth, disease and death during the span of vine budding to cork pulling. “A Very Good Year” is very compelling reading for those who want to read about the lives that make a bottle of wine.

The only thing missing in “A Very Good Year” are some of the photographs that must have been snapped by the photographers that Weiss mentions several times in the text.


A Very Good Year: The Journey of a California Wine from Vine to Table by Mike Weiss (Gotham Books, 2005, 288 pages, $26.00USD Hardcover).

Disclosure: A complimentary copy of the book was supplied to me by Gotham Books.

The Botanist and the Vintner
The lush green leafed rows of vines of a vineyard don’t call to mind a battlefield but in the late 19th century the vineyards of France were made up of “frail wooden frigates, lightly armored cruisers and unsinkable battleships”. This is a colorful and very telling description by Christy Campbell in his book The Botanist and the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved For The World as he illustrates the scale of resistance of various varieties and species of vine against the scourge of phylloxera. Vitis vinifera which had provided the grapes for the great wines of France were frailty personified while Vitis rotundifolia, also known as Scuppernong in its native North America, was resistant to the little insect; and so it should be, it had grown up surrounded by the bug.

Phylloxera was introduced into France in the early 1860’s by vines from New York and had infested virtually the whole of France by the end of the century. The cure was to use rootstock resistant to the insect, but even here battle lines were drawn between the américainistes who advocated the use of the resistant American rootstocks and the sulfuristes who preferred insecticides. But first the cause of the malady that made vines wither and die in the early 1860s would have to be identified and studied. The 19th century struggle against phylloxera is masterfully told by Campbell as he weaves considerable scientific detail into a story coupled with personal accounts of a number of the major players, all against a backdrop of French politics.

The lists of practical remedies that were proposed for the 30,000 franc prize offered by the French Imperial Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce border on the ridiculous; marching bands to drum the aphid out of its root loving existence. However the most remarkable facet of the story is the considerable insight of individuals such as the Montpellier botanist Jules-Émile Planchon and Charles Valentine Riley an English-born entomologist from Missouri in realizing that the aphid was responsible for the disease and that it had come from America. And then there were the struggles faced in convincing vineyard owners to destroy their vines. Why destroy the vines when almost everyone seemed to have a concoction that would kill the pest? Besides there was money to be made in sulphur.

The Botanist and the Vintner is a compelling story and should find a place on the book shelves of all serious lovers of the vine and wine.

The Botanist and the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved For The World by Christy Campbell (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005, 320 pages, $24.95USD, Hardcover).

Disclosure: A complimentary copy of the book was supplied to me by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.