A love of wine and a love of books and books on wine go hand in hand.
I can’t afford to drink trophy wines nor the likes of a Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tache; a Château Margaux; or one of Robert Parker’s so called Super Tuscan’s, say a Tignanello – let alone a Krug – however I can at least console myself by reading about them.
After all, as a wine writer I’m always banging on about there being more to wine other than the wine itself – wine is as much about the people, places and stories as it is about what’s in the bottle. Cold comfort you may well think – I agree.
While I still have a smattering of top shelf wines (mainly Australian) in my small cellar my Grange, aged Hunter Semillons, old Tahbilk cabernets and marsannes; vintage Coldstream Hills chardonnays and McLaren Vale shiraz have long gone – not so my modest collection of wine books.
First and foremost among these are my old tasting notes replete with numerous wine labels carefully pasted in and juxtaposed with hurriedly scribbled, near indecipherable hand written notes. Most wine scribes have their own peculiar code or written shorthand for evaluating wines – and as for labels, they both reveal (and obscure) much, but are artworks in their own right.
Sadly modern technology in the form of today’s (un-removable) super- glued labels has put paid to this. By way of compensation I have an eclectic cork collection gathering dust in various containers around the house and on the dining room wall.
However, as many Aussie wines are now sealed under screw cap, even my cork collection is threatened – modernity concedes little to tradition!
Though there’s no intrinsic monetary value in my motley collection of tasting note books – there’s a lifetime of memories of wines savoured, shared (occasionally spilt) and enjoyed in good company.
And for that alone I’m grateful, as wine for me (especially when paired with good food) is very much a shared experience. I seldom drink alone, apart from indulging in a post prandial fortified accompanied by a good book.
I’m by no means what some would call a collector of books, nothing as highfalutin as that, for I rarely attend book auctions and possess few antique tomes of note or significant value. I’m more of a habitual accumulator come fossicker, who for years has scoured the better, and now diminishing, specialist second hand bookshops.
And as a student of history, I enjoy marrying my love of history to my love of wine. In a practical sense, an appreciation of the past helps me understand the present, or at least put things into context.
What’s all this got to do with wine and wine books? – a lot.
Wine history per se.
In addition to learning about the history of wine and Old World wines from the likes of Edward Hyams’s scholarly Dionysus – A Social History of Wine (Thames & Hudson 1965); Hugh Johnson’s erudite The Story of Wine (Mitchell Beazley 1989) and his Wine Companion ( Colporter Press 1983) and the meticulous Michael Broadbent’s The Great Vintage Book (Mitchell Beazley 1980) among others – there’s much enjoyment.
Take for example Jancis Robinson’s indispensable The Oxford Companion to Wine (OUP1994) coupled with her autobiographical Confessions of a Wine Lover (Viking 1997) – both are illuminating in their different ways, the former as a reference, the latter as a personal insight.
Champagne
Whilst on insights – for an authoritative glimpse into champagne the world’s most celebrated, excessively promoted and luxurious wine (but not necessarily the world’s best) – I have relied heavily on Patrick Forbes’s Champagne: The wine, the land and the people (Gollancz 1967); supplemented by AndréSimon’s The History of Champagne (Ebury Press 1962) and Henry McNulty’s Champagne (Collins 1987).
And I’m much updated and refreshed by Tyson Stelzer’s insightful The Champagne Guide 2014 -15. Incidentally if you want a different take on champagne read Mike Veseth’s Extreme Wine (Rowman & Littlefield 2013).
Wine grapes
I’m saving to buyWine Grapes – a complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavours (to give it its full title) by Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding and José Vouillamoz – which I plan to shout myself come my next birthday – a must for any wine writer of repute or avid book collector.
Wine in Australia
Thanks to the likes of Walter Senior James, Dan Murphy, Anders Ousback, Oscar Mendleson, Len Evans, Max Lake, Sam Benwell and, of course James Halliday – I have a good grasp on the development wine in Australia, especially from the late 1950s and mid 1960s onwards when the genesis of table wine was laid.
Time and space mean that, as much as I would like to credit in detail the contribution of each of the above, I simply can’t.
However there are a few gems that demand attention. These include most all of Walter Senior James’s books (which I will detail later); Max Lake’s exquisite Vine & Scalpel (The Jacaranda Press 1967) and Sam Benwell’s Journey to Wine in Victoria (Pitman 1960).
Pre-dating this modern era, aside from James Busby’s A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and the art of making wine (1825), of which I (sadly) I have only a reprint, two gems stand out – Hubert de Castella’s John Bull’s Vineyard (1886) and a handsome translation of Hubert De Castella’s Notes of An Australian Vine Grower (Mast Gully Press 1979 by C. B. Thornton-Smith. The original was published in 1882.
Huon Hooke’s Max Shubert Winemaker (Kerr Publishing 1994) gets an honourable mention as does James Halliday’s A Life in Wine (Hardie Grant 2012) and Max Allen’s The History of Australian Wine – Stories from the Vineyard to The cellar Door (Victory Books 2012).
I suspect Max would have been preferred A History of Australian Wine rather than The –for obvious reasons. Victory Books is an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing (a pale imitation of its progenitor Melbourne University Press).
To round off Aussie wine books there’s a slim paperback I hold dear, Keith Dunstan’s whimsical The Wine Dictionary (Sun Books – Macmillan Australia 1985).
More recently, Keith’s son David Dunstan wrote A Vision for Wine – a history of the Viticultural Society of Victoria (published by the Society in 2013). This masterful work is much broader in scope than its title suggests. It’s a fascinating social history of wine in colonial Australia told though a narrow lens, but immensely interesting and very readable.
Aside from chronicling the boom and bust mentality of the Australian wine industry and the constant threat of phylloxera – Dunstan reveals that wowserism, the Temperance Movement and regional and state rivalry (at one time or another) contrived to nearly kill the industry – and were often as much (if not more) of a threat than phylloxera was – and still is in some regions.
Regrettably, history is history for many these days and this may deny David Dunstan the readership A Vision for Wine richly deserves. I hope not.
Occasionally an unexpected good read surfaces and one such book by Graeme Lofts called Hart & Soul – Australia’s First Families of Wine (John Wiley & Sons 2010) qualifies as such.
It’s a series interviews profiling the 12 families who formed the Australia’s First Families of Wine entity in 2009 – largely to promote Australia’s premium wine’s image overseas. So if you want to know a little about Australia’s wine elite, including the likes of Yalumba, Tyrrells, Tahbilk, Brown Brothers, McWilliams, Henschke and the like – this is for you.
Lastly, on local wine – thanks to the generosity of Hanging Rock’s John Ellis who loaned me Geoffrey Bishop’s Australian Winemaking – The Roseworthy Influence (Investigator Press 1980) – I have learnt much about the contribution Roseworthy graduates have made to Australian viticulture and viniculture and, in particular, to the contribution one Alan Hickenbotham has made.
John Ellis is a Roseworthy graduate, hence his interest, but the book reads like a who’s who of influential winemakers and winemaking from 1936 to the 1980’s (and far beyond).
Like David Dunstan’s A Vision for Wine there’s much more to Bishop’s Roseworthy history then the title suggest. If you want a contemporary take on Australian wine then read both Max Allen’s and David Dunstan’s books – and if you can get hold of it supplement Allan and Dunstan with Bishop’s Roseworthy book.
Walter Senior James
I will introduce you to Walter Senior James in a future blog. His writing is somewhat of an acquired taste in that he is akin to an essayist, a vinous Martin Amis or a William Hazlitt – but its significance is not.
A gentleman, sometime winemaker and scholarly, old-school writer he was one of the first of what I call the modern era wine scribes who started to emerge in of the late 1950 and early 1960s.
Wine and food
Wine and food are inseparable; however this chapter will have to wait for another day and another time – so watch this space.
As a teaser to what’s in store gastronomically and vinously I’ll leave you with a series of books titled The Compleat Imbiber published (I think?) from 1956 to 1971 – at least that’s the period my 12 volumes span.
They are a constant source of joy, amusement and information and hence are often used when researching my wine and food material. They are extremely well edited by the astute Cyril Ray (no stranger to wine, food, literature and history), especially of the likes of Ch. Lafite, Ch. Mouton Rothschild and Bollinger – all of which he has written histories of – I have his one on Bollinger, but alas no Bollinger itself, the last of the RD ‘73 has long gone.
Brimming with wit and whimsy the very English Compleat Imbiber is complete in every sense. It skilfully and stylishly intertwines wine (and spirits) gastronomy, the culinary arts, literature and social history – coupled wry humour – into a heady distillation that leaves you wanting more.
Unlike my wines, my books are stored in a much more logical, orderly, retrievable and accessible fashion – whereas it’s a nightmare trying to unearth some of my older vintages as I have too many bottles randomly stacked on top of one another. Enough said.
Thankfully books are much easier to look after than wine – dust and humidity are their enemies in much the same way light, movement and humidity is to wine.
I’m passionate about both and though I love sharing wine I’m loath to share a book –never a borrower or lender be – and all that. That reminds me, I had better get the Roseworthy book back to John Ellis! If this means a visit to Hanging Rock and some more of his sublime Macedon NV Brut LD – Cuvee VIII – coupled with John and Ann’s company– then the trip is a small price to pay.
Len Evans & Bulletin Place, Sydney
Besides, I’m dying to ask Ann all about her time at Len Evans’s renowned Bulletin Place wine bar and restaurant in Sydney – given that I have just finished James Halliday’s A Life in Wine (which told me almost as much about Len than it did James) I’m keen to unearth some of Bulletin Place’s long held secrets.
What Jimmy Watson’s was to Melbourne Bulletin Place was to Sydney – their collective contribution to Australian wine, food and conviviality was enormous.
Mike Veseth
More to come on The Wine Economist’s Mike Veseth – with whom I also shared the aforementioned Macedon NV Brut LD – Cuvee VIII recently. His Wine Wars book is a must-read and I’m currently exploring the world of extreme wines within the pages of his latest book Extreme Wine – Searching the World for the Best, the Worst, the outrageously Cheap, the insanely Overpriced and the Undiscovered – if that catchy title doesn’t get you in, nothing will. Visit Mike’s blog and you will see what I mean.
Cheers
Michael Hince
