Lawrence Osborne

Review of "The Accidental Connoisseur" by wine critic Jancis Robinson in The Financial Times

Reviews

December 03, 2007

One sign of how wine is now firmly embedded in our culture
rather than being seen as an exotic ferment of interest only
to an effete elite is that there is a new generation of books
about it. These are not guides to buying or making it but
discursive tales which are only tangentially about wine and
which can just as easily be savoured by teetotallers as by
wine fanatics.

We have, perhaps inevitably, the relocation genre, tales of
how wine neophytes turned themselves into successful
vignerons. Patricia Atkinson of Clos d'Yvigne's The Ripening
Sun has been joined by the likes of Patrick Moon's account of
the Languedoc's wine revolution in Virgile's Vineyard and, out
next month, Tony Rocca of Collelungo's Catching Fireflies. But
this is by now well-trod literary territory.

More significant in terms of what they say about wine's place
in modern society are two new American books, of which
Lawrence Osborne's The Accidental Connoisseur is possibly the
most entertaining book about wine ever written.

What I cannot quite imagine is how he described the book he
was intending to write to his publishers before committing
what is, after all, the most nebulous of ideas to paper.
"Well, see, I don't know much about wine but I'm going to go
visit a few wine producers in California, France and Italy to
find out about taste - okay?"

Perhaps he waited until he had a sample chapter or two to
show, for no sensible publisher could resist the trenchant
prose and determined mischief in this self-styled goof's guide
to wine (subtitle: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine
World).

Although he was born in England and brought up on nothing
grander than Sainsbury's Beaujolais, Osborne is now a New
York-based author whose previous subjects have included Paris,
Asperger Syndrome and A Brief History of Sexual Pessimism. He
is clearly not nearly as naive about wine as he would have us
believe.

This is a joyful book in which, unfettered by the need to
pronounce as a wine critic (nor, it would seem, by any notion
of drink-driving laws), he just drinks the stuff, with gusto
and curiosity. His favourite wine of all, after ha has been
entertained at the near-impenetrable likes of Château
Lafite, Opus One and the Palazzo Antinori, turns out to be a
bottle of inconsequential local white drunk, alone, on a
Puglian beach. I think we know that feeling.

But he also drinks in the words and mannerisms of the famous
and not-so-famous of the wine world whom he meets en route.
Thanks to a wickedly observant eye and a particularly acute
ear, or perhaps uncharacteristically disciplined tape
recording, we can relish encounters with princes, rogues,
crazed technocrats and even Maurice Delgado, a French wine
tourist in California's rain-sodden Russian River Valley in
need of company other than his photocopied tasting notes from
L'Express while his wife is struck down by a stomach bug.

Osborne and Delgado discuss whether the Rochioli Pinot Noir
has, as asserted in L'Express, a 'spherical, sexy mouth'.

'"Well Laurent, I see your point. Yes, I'm prepared to assert
there are floral notes. But it's a little flat after
all, isn't it? I didn't say that I found it sexy."

"A sexy wine?"

"Oh I've had a sexy wine or two. The wife and I like a sexy
wine on Saturday night. Especially on vacation. But this is
not a sexy wine, is it?"

"If wine is like sex," I said, "this is yoga."

"Yoga?" He swirled and sniffed. "I'm not sure I get you there.
You mean athletic?"

"Virtuous. Unsexy."

He suddenly laughed viciously. "Ah, you mean American!"'

The supposed Americanisation of European wine is a persistent
theme in both books, although the English-born Osborne is wise
enough to have any concerns about this voiced by others. There
are the anti-Bush ('"c'est pas Tony Blair!"') rantings
of Aimé Guibert of the (consistently mis-spelt) Mas de
Daumas Gassac, and non-conformist American wine merchant Neal
Rosenthal on what he sees as a dangerous trend towards
"childish" wine: '"Everything is acceleration. We're in an age
where people are like mad children. Is complexity too
difficult now? Or are we all children?"'

Fellow American resident Englishman, the urbane Gerald Asher,
is clearly rather a hero for Osborne who, when writing yet
again about tasting, reports that Asher 'seems to be
suggesting that place itself is twofold: on the one hand it is
terroir: on the other it is what is going on around you as you
are drinking. The first is geological, the second
psychological. And taste was presumably a high-wire act
balancing itself precariously between the two.'

The second was definitely in the ascendant on that Puglian
beach, but also when Osborne was tasting a strange Vin Santo
with Stefano Grillo of the Umbrian producer La Palazzola with
his louche-sounding friend 'an English sculptor named Johnny
Madge'. Osborne observes that the wine 'was gloriously
unironic. It smelled like an old church suffused with incense
or your father's library nutty with old tobacco. I couldn't
resist blurting this out.

'Grilli cocked his head sideways as if considering the idea,
then said "Why not? Why not your father's library?"

"Your father's library?" Johnny looked at me. "Did your father
have a library?"

It was a good question. He did not.

"No?" Grilli said. "Then how can it smell like your father's
library?"

I said I didn't know, but that it nevertheless smelled like my
father's library, if my father had had a library.'

I know that feeling too. 

So acute are the personal portraits that the father of modern
California wine Robert Mondavi must be regretting agreeing to
see, nay lavishly entertain, Osborne. American wine guru
Robert Parker must be relieved that he did not even respond to
Osborne's initial overtures. Osborne has quite enough fun with
him without even a confirmed sighting.

Quite different in tone is William Echikson's Noble Rot - A
Bordeaux Wine Revolution. As one might expect of the Brussels
bureau chief for Dow Jones newswires, this is a dutifully
journalistic account of one of the most obvious stories in
wine of recent years, the rivalry between the old and new
guards in the world's most significant fine wine region.
Echikson is unquestioningly reverential towards Parker,
inevitably a key figure in the current battle between
classicism and modernism in Bordeaux wine styles.

Where Osborne's book is multi-coloured and multi-layered, rich
with cultural allusion, Echikson's is black and white.

Old money? Boo.

New BMWs (and there are seem to be lots of them in this book)?
Hooray!

The British? Boo.

Alain Raynaud of Ch Quinault L'Enclos (who lent Echikson and
family a house while he was researching this book)? Hooray!

Everyone with a history is a 'mandarin'. And so on.

I would recommend Noble Rot to any close follower of the
Bordeaux wine scene for what is revealed, sometimes perhaps
unwittingly, about the long-standing alliances and motivations
among some of the characters in this occasionally unedifying
story.

And I would recommend The Accidental Connoisseur to anyone who
will forgive the odd mis-spelling in order to savour a
rollicking ride through wine country.

One sign of how wine is now firmly embedded in our culture
rather than being seen as an exotic ferment of interest only
to an effete elite is that there is a new generation of books
about it. These are not guides to buying or making it but
discursive tales which are only tangentially about wine and
which can just as easily be savoured by teetotallers as by
wine fanatics.

We have, perhaps inevitably, the relocation genre, tales of
how wine neophytes turned themselves into successful
vignerons. Patricia Atkinson of Clos d'Yvigne's The Ripening
Sun has been joined by the likes of Patrick Moon's account of
the Languedoc's wine revolution in Virgile's Vineyard and, out
next month, Tony Rocca of Collelungo's Catching Fireflies. But
this is by now well-trod literary territory.

More significant in terms of what they say about wine's place
in modern society are two new American books, of which
Lawrence Osborne's The Accidental Connoisseur is possibly the
most entertaining book about wine ever written.

What I cannot quite imagine is how he described the book he
was intending to write to his publishers before committing
what is, after all, the most nebulous of ideas to paper.
"Well, see, I don't know much about wine but I'm going to go
visit a few wine producers in California, France and Italy to
find out about taste - okay?"

Perhaps he waited until he had a sample chapter or two to
show, for no sensible publisher could resist the trenchant
prose and determined mischief in this self-styled goof's guide
to wine (subtitle: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine
World).

Although he was born in England and brought up on nothing
grander than Sainsbury's Beaujolais, Osborne is now a New
York-based author whose previous subjects have included Paris,
Asperger Syndrome and A Brief History of Sexual Pessimism. He
is clearly not nearly as naive about wine as he would have us
believe.

This is a joyful book in which, unfettered by the need to
pronounce as a wine critic (nor, it would seem, by any notion
of drink-driving laws), he just drinks the stuff, with gusto
and curiosity. His favourite wine of all, after ha has been
entertained at the near-impenetrable likes of Château
Lafite, Opus One and the Palazzo Antinori, turns out to be a
bottle of inconsequential local white drunk, alone, on a
Puglian beach. I think we know that feeling.

But he also drinks in the words and mannerisms of the famous
and not-so-famous of the wine world whom he meets en route.
Thanks to a wickedly observant eye and a particularly acute
ear, or perhaps uncharacteristically disciplined tape
recording, we can relish encounters with princes, rogues,
crazed technocrats and even Maurice Delgado, a French wine
tourist in California's rain-sodden Russian River Valley in
need of company other than his photocopied tasting notes from
L'Express while his wife is struck down by a stomach bug.

Osborne and Delgado discuss whether the Rochioli Pinot Noir
has, as asserted in L'Express, a 'spherical, sexy mouth'.

'"Well Laurent, I see your point. Yes, I'm prepared to assert
there are floral notes. But it's a little flat after
all, isn't it? I didn't say that I found it sexy."

"A sexy wine?"

"Oh I've had a sexy wine or two. The wife and I like a sexy
wine on Saturday night. Especially on vacation. But this is
not a sexy wine, is it?"

"If wine is like sex," I said, "this is yoga."

"Yoga?" He swirled and sniffed. "I'm not sure I get you there.
You mean athletic?"

"Virtuous. Unsexy."

He suddenly laughed viciously. "Ah, you mean American!"'

The supposed Americanisation of European wine is a persistent
theme in both books, although the English-born Osborne is wise
enough to have any concerns about this voiced by others. There
are the anti-Bush ('"c'est pas Tony Blair!"') rantings
of Aimé Guibert of the (consistently mis-spelt) Mas de
Daumas Gassac, and non-conformist American wine merchant Neal
Rosenthal on what he sees as a dangerous trend towards
"childish" wine: '"Everything is acceleration. We're in an age
where people are like mad children. Is complexity too
difficult now? Or are we all children?"'

Fellow American resident Englishman, the urbane Gerald Asher,
is clearly rather a hero for Osborne who, when writing yet
again about tasting, reports that Asher 'seems to be
suggesting that place itself is twofold: on the one hand it is
terroir: on the other it is what is going on around you as you
are drinking. The first is geological, the second
psychological. And taste was presumably a high-wire act
balancing itself precariously between the two.'

The second was definitely in the ascendant on that Puglian
beach, but also when Osborne was tasting a strange Vin Santo
with Stefano Grillo of the Umbrian producer La Palazzola with
his louche-sounding friend 'an English sculptor named Johnny
Madge'. Osborne observes that the wine 'was gloriously
unironic. It smelled like an old church suffused with incense
or your father's library nutty with old tobacco. I couldn't
resist blurting this out.

'Grilli cocked his head sideways as if considering the idea,
then said "Why not? Why not your father's library?"

"Your father's library?" Johnny looked at me. "Did your father
have a library?"

It was a good question. He did not.

"No?" Grilli said. "Then how can it smell like your father's
library?"

I said I didn't know, but that it nevertheless smelled like my
father's library, if my father had had a library.'

I know that feeling too. 

So acute are the personal portraits that the father of modern
California wine Robert Mondavi must be regretting agreeing to
see, nay lavishly entertain, Osborne. American wine guru
Robert Parker must be relieved that he did not even respond to
Osborne's initial overtures. Osborne has quite enough fun with
him without even a confirmed sighting.

Quite different in tone is William Echikson's Noble Rot - A
Bordeaux Wine Revolution. As one might expect of the Brussels
bureau chief for Dow Jones newswires, this is a dutifully
journalistic account of one of the most obvious stories in
wine of recent years, the rivalry between the old and new
guards in the world's most significant fine wine region.
Echikson is unquestioningly reverential towards Parker,
inevitably a key figure in the current battle between
classicism and modernism in Bordeaux wine styles.

Where Osborne's book is multi-coloured and multi-layered, rich
with cultural allusion, Echikson's is black and white.

Old money? Boo.

New BMWs (and there are seem to be lots of them in this book)?
Hooray!

The British? Boo.

Alain Raynaud of Ch Quinault L'Enclos (who lent Echikson and
family a house while he was researching this book)? Hooray!

Everyone with a history is a 'mandarin'. And so on.

I would recommend Noble Rot to any close follower of the
Bordeaux wine scene for what is revealed, sometimes perhaps
unwittingly, about the long-standing alliances and motivations
among some of the characters in this occasionally unedifying
story.

And I would recommend The Accidental Connoisseur to anyone who
will forgive the odd mis-spelling in order to savour a
rollicking ride through wine country.

Review of The Accidental Connoisseur from Courtney Cochran's blog Hip Tastes

http://www.courtneycochran.com/blog/2008/07/

From the wine blog www.vindelatable.blogspot.com

Monday, September 29, 2008

The Wine Writing of Lawrence Osborne and Jay McInerney

Readers may have noticed my affection for wine writers Lawrence Osborne or Jay McInerney by glancing at the "my favorite wine and food books" bar on my blog, or through browsing the selection at the Visit Kirstin's Amazon Store link.

Although the number of fine writers writing about wine is very high, these two have something special. Their writing always strays from the norm in its engaging, approachable style and comedic flair. Sure, there's a little wine snobbery and namedropping here and there in their books, but unlike many other wine writers who can't seem to complete a paragraph without mentioning (gasp!) Petrus or the Rothschilds, McInerney has made it though an entire essay with the names he's dropped being Roger Dangerfield and Baywatch. Which brings our attention to comedy in wine. There's not enough of it. In general, wine isn't intended to be scary or overly exclusive, but bad writers can make it seem so. McInerney and Osborne's charm is often found in their acknowledgment of elitism in wine and in their exploration of the exclusive wine bottles and the craze behind them.

Here's an example of some of McInerney's work from "Bacchus and Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar," where he considers the allure of the word Champagne.

"When was the last time you said to your loved one, "Honey, I want to lick sparkling wine off your naked body" or, "Let's break out the Iron Horse?" Sometimes the substitution of the words Champagne or Cristal makes the declarations more plausible."

And when Osborne first meets Robert Mondavi in "The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World."

"Robert Mondavi came in as if propelled on wheels, soundless but swift. Cocooned in a dapper multicolored knit waistcoat, he cuts an elfin but worldly figure in his corporate HW office on Route 29. I thought him rather elegant in his suede-lined sports jacket and frosted pink shirt."

If you don't have books written by Osborne or McInerney, I would highly suggest buying them. Although no wine writer's essays should be used as bibles dictating what one should and shouldn't buy or taste, they can certainly be read for entertainment, general wine education and wine and writing inspiration. These guys are good.

The work of the aforementioned writers can also be found on the Men's Vogue website, gratis. Mens Vogue has for years been hiring some of the best writers to cover wine and food. Check them out. There are some great wineries that are featured via Vogue.

Captured in Amber

One doesn't ordinarily think of an evening at Alain Ducasse at Essex House winding down to a trolley filled with humble rums. André Campeyre, Ducasse's slightly unnerving sommelier, who knows everything in liquor's vast domain, wheels his rums out like a man about to spring a surprise. And indeed he is. You've probably already guessed that these aren't the usual Captain Morgan's nor even the doughty Pusser's that for 230 years was the official daily drink of the British Royal Navy. No: These aren't limpid rotguts you mix with Coke or toss into daiquiris. Campeyre has assembled something like a who's-who of rum's queenly aristocrats. "They are," he says, "the least known, the most mysterious of liquors."

Rum

Bacchus Rising

There is a scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian in which the hapless messiah, played by Graham Chapman, hawks ancient Roman snack food in Jerusalem's Colosseum. His tray is filled with ocelot spleens, jaguar earlobes, and wolf-nipple chips, and we think to ourselves that Roman food was probably just as gruesome. But what about Roman wine? They apparently liked to cut it with seawater and honey. How disgusting was it? We will never know, because no one will ever be able to reproduce exactly the combination of varietals, viticulture, and climate that prevailed in Roman Europe 2,000 years ago. As with ocelot spleens, we will have to guess.

Pompei Wine

Humble Origins

A few miles inland from Pescara, but still within sight of the sea and amid the largest olive-oil production area in Italy, the hill town of Loreto Aprutino presents a classic Italian skyline of campaniles and sloped roofs. The Valentini winery sits right next to the manicured Castello Chiola at the town's highest point. (The castle now houses an upscale hotel.) On a frigid day in February, with snow on the ground, there was no one up there, and there were certainly no wine tourists at the Azienda Valentini. To the door of its elegant premises — quite anonymous and with none of the gimmicky signage that winemakers now adore — came a tall squire in crumpled corduroys: 46-year-old Francesco Valentini, who has been running the winery since the death of his father, Edoardo, in April 2006 at the age of 72. Francesco speaks no English, though there is an air of quiet cosmopolitan sophistication about him. And he seemed quite amused that anyone would drive out here from Rome on such a cold morning.

Valentini Trebbiano d'Abruzzo

Ghost Wine

In November 2003, in a Milan hospital, the Italian winemaker Ezio-Voyat died after lapsing into a short coma. Voyat, in his 80s, was an underground legend among Italian oenophiles, an eccentric maestro of aristocratic wines from the mountain region of Valle d'Aosta, on the Alpine frontier with France. A massive, Falstaffian man with a voracious appetite, he had, for most of his life, made his living as a casino croupier. But back in the sixties Voyat began making one of the most legendary reds the peninsula had ever produced — a Chambave Rouge so rare that most sommeliers have never heard of it, let alone drunk it.

Chambave Rouge

Chablis, A Pilgrimage to Domaine Raveneau

As Edward Abbey had it, in a mood of gleeful disparagement: "A good writer must have more than vin rose in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink." But what could be more penetrating, complex, or grave than a great Chablis? Most writers would be lucky to have that in their pens. Yet a mauvaise reputation is not the first problem the august appellation has had to face. Devastated during World War II, the land devoted to vineyards in Chablis eventually dropped to a tiny 1,235 acres. The region had to be entirely rebuilt

Domaine Raveneau

White Rioja

If ever the idiocy of the global wine culture needed to be demonstrated, the fate of white Rioja would be the easiest way. These lean, haunting wines are the equal of anything. But to contemporary taste, weaned on fruity jollity, they seem resinous and forbidding. They pull the drinker into another century, where he probably doesn't want to be: into a world of mold, patience, and muck. And, of course, one of elegance and refinement.

Lopez de Heredia

1947 Martin Ray Cabernet

"Obstreperous, difficult, arcane," as his wife later described his reputation, Martin Ray — known as Rusty — was the son of a fiery prohibitionist minister. He learned wine at Paul Masson's Mountain Winery in Saratoga, between San Jose and Santa Cruz, and went on to buy the original Masson vineyards. In the forties, Ray became a vocal advocate for creating 100 percent varietal wines in California, and in so doing sparked a wine revolution in a region then better known for pasty pseudo-wines sold under dubious marketing labels

Time in a Bottle