Non-Odious Wine Books

Why is it that while books and wine number among civilization’s fondest inventions, most books about wine are as exciting as a teeth cleaning in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey? This Andy-Rooneyesque formulation popped into my head while I was scanning the “wine & spirits” section at the local Barnes & Noble. Nearly every book belonged to one of two categories. The first had titles that contained phrases like “everything you need to know,” “demystified!” and “made simple.” Most publishers appear to have decided that the point of reading about wine is to salve the public’s feelings of inadequacy and resulting panic about the subject, and these books attempt not only to cut the information into bite-size morsels, but masticate them for you as well. They remind me of wine shops that organize their inventory in sections like “fresh,” “rich” and “juicy.” (Imagine walking into a book store where the shelves are labelled “arch,” “quirky” and “plodding.”) Further along this parabola there’re titles that “demystify” not only the topic but the reader. I haven’t read The Downtown Girl’s Guide to Wine or Hip Tastes: The Fresh Guide to Wine, but their covers called out to me. “Try some Riesling, dumbass,” they seemed to be saying, “you’ll like it because it smells like verbena and lemon Pledge.” Lighten up, snob, you may be thinking, not everyone wants to be some kind of cuff-link-festooned wine aficionado. True enough, but conveying basic information isn’t the same as treating the reader as though she’s suffered a mild stroke. And nothing makes culture more boring than reducing it to an accessory. Can The Downtown Girl’s Guide to Mahler be far behind?

Compendiums of tasting notes, out of date before they’re even published, make up the second least exciting category. These, too, come in two flavors. I’ll call them “Beautiful Dreamer” and “Twilight of the Gods.” Beautiful Dreamers gild their notes with adjectives as though they were ecstatic visions glimpsed from Rimbaud’s opium den. Take this: “Initial whiffs of woodland plants—dried fern and humus—ceding to the scent of black truffles mingling with flowers like freesia, lily, and peony…flavors pervaded with torrefaction of roasted mocha beans mixed with chestnuts, dried fruits, even a touch of grilled pineapple…very fine fantail.” (Michael Edwards, The Finest Wines of Champagne: A Guide to the Best Cuvées, Houses, and Growers, 2009.) It’s not that I doubt Edwards’ ability to discern freesia in his glass (okay, I kind of do), but these descriptors tell me nothing about the broader experience of drinking the wine: what it made him think about, how it made him feel. Instead, this genre piles on chimerical aromas and flavors to glorify the reviewer’s unerring palate. As far as I know, no one has ever walked into a store and asked for a wine that smells like zinnias and wet suede.

Twilight of the Gods writers trade imagination for impact; they amplify their prose until it cuts through ambiguity like a chainsaw through a breadstick. Take this passage from Robert Parker Jr.: “The 1993 [Dalla Valle Vineyards] Maya is a sensational, blockbuster wine of exceptional richness and personality. An opaque purple, with a sweet, cassis aroma, this awesomely concentrated wine reveals well-integrated tannin, acid and wood. A monument in the making, the 1993 Maya should reach full maturity in a decade and last 25-30 years. Amazing!” (Parker’s Wine Buyer’s Guide, 4th edition, 1995.) Besides eliciting groans from the graves of William Strunk and E. B. White, the passage makes it clear that for a reader to dislike the 1993 Maya would mean that his or her discernment must be no better than a parakeet’s—after all, it’s not just a bottle of red wine, but a monument. Twilight of the Gods writers believe that authority comes from positing an opinion with maximum force, a written form of bullying that happens to be incompatible with subtlety or—the quality that repels these pundits like garlic a vampire—humor.

Now that I’ve dragged a razor across the shelf, here’re some wine books I love:

Adventures on the Wine Route, Kermit Lynch, 1988. Lynch’s account of his journey through France’s wine country is a work of equally fervid Francophilia and Francophobia. It’s also no less compelling for being ideological; Lynch’s arguments for an auteurist approach to winemaking—terroir, finesse, unfiltered wine—are the most persuasive I’ve come across. While reading, it’s easy to forget that Adventures is essentially a series of vignettes about the virtuous producers whose goods Lynch just happens to export to the US. Fortunately, his gifts as a writer outweigh even his business acumen. When recently I asked Lynch why he never attempted another narrative book, he simply shrugged. The only book on wine I’ve read that can be called literature. Funny index: Frequently funny and—bonus!—politically incorrect.

The Wine Bible, Karen MacNeil, 2001. A dreaded “complete guide” that manages to pull it off. MacNeil’s writing is unpretentious, personal, and evocative; she manages to cover miles of ground without resorting to reference book clichés or dumbing down the subject. The book imparts regions, styles and grapes with minimal tedium. Instead of wagging a shopping list, MacNeil sketches top producers and their most distinctive wines and leaves out vintages. A model introduction.  Funny index: Not so much.

A Hedonist in the Cellar, Jay McInerney, 2006. McInerney’s second wine book is a collection of columns from House & Garden. They’re chatty, vital, irreverent and read as though they were awfully fun to write. The obsession with starfucking and class in McInerney’s novels is present here, too, and may be the book’s most enjoyable tic. McInerney admits to dropping everything to fly to London when Julian Barnes offers to pour an ancient Bordeaux, and describes arriving late at La Grenouille where an “Asian princess” challenges him to guess the identity and vintage of the red in the carafe, which he nails. You won’t be surprised that it’s ‘82 Haut-Brion. No big thing, the author avers, once you’ve thrown back a couple of cases of the stuff, you won’t forget the haunting aroma. To use a term he’s fond of, McInerney is a slut, but thankfully he’s a catholic slut, enthusing about the low-rent likes of Finger Lakes Rkatsiteli and Malbec. Hedonist can be consumed in dollops or all at once and lends itself well to rereading. Funny index: Very funny. Occasionally bitchy.

Making Sense of Wine, Matt Kramer, 1989. A brief theory of wine by one of the smartest writers on the subject. Lapidary prose—a kind of vinous Plato’s Symposium—that teaches the reader how to think about wine. The chapter on the relationship between critics, winemakers and the trade in the current updated edition is particularly insightful and ruthless. Admirably concise. Kramer: “The simplest, and perhaps best, definition is that a connoisseur is one who can distinguish between what he or she likes, and what is good.”  Funny index: Not even close.

Everyday Drinking, Kingsley Amis, 2008. Collects three books written between 1971 and 1984. Doesn’t deal with wine per se—what wine “advice” there is tends to be fatuous and dated—but with the broader topic of imbibing. The third title (How’s Your Glass?) comprises a bunch of quizzes and isn’t worth your time. The rest, though, is damn funny. Best are the chapters on “How Not to Get Drunk” and “The Hangover.” For the former: “being tall and fat;” to assuage the latter, Amis prescribes reading One Day in the Life of   Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn. Funny index: I chortled until the laughter turned into a phlegmy cough.

photo by Robert S. Donovan