A New Crop of Vintage Literature for Connoisseurs

In the days before video came the wine book. These were slim, privately published, unillustrated tracts that contained the ramblings of that precious breed known as the wine connoisseur. “Ah, yes, the 1875. Great vintage, and a most sublime and abstruse endeavor.”

Then, before America discovered White Zinfandel, we saw the advent of the Wine Book, a massive tome that resembled an obelisk. It bowed coffee tables. Wine Books had a lot of color pictures and a lot of well-researched and -written text. No one ever read Wine Books for fear that one slip would break a metatarsal.

In the last decade, we have experienced the Wine Text, a kind of primer for the budding wine enthusiast. As they have come to us in all their stupefying statistics, so many of them sound so much the same, complete with their endless lists--the Crus of Beaujolais, a glossary of words no one uses, a detailed description of what oechsle means.

Some of these things can sound awfully derivative: “There are five First Growth wines in the Medoc.” Snore.

In the last few years, thankfully, a new breed of educational book has appeared. It is written with style and grace and the good sense not to merely list things in columns. The best of them are written by Hugh Johnson (under various titles) and by Alexis Bespaloff. In fact, Bespaloff’s “Signet Book of Wine” ($4.50) is the current U.S. all-time best-selling wine book in America.

Maps and Illustrations

“The Essential Wine Book” by Oz Clarke (Fireside/Simon & Schuster: $14.95, paperback) adds depth to the educational category of wine writing, but for a number of curious reasons, I liked it. One reason is that this revision of an earlier work (1985) does not try to be comprehensive.

Clarke, a Briton with a sense of humor and a divergent and diverting writing style, recognizes that to write a primer on wine that is relevant and unpretentious, one must address questions of the various wine-growing regions of the world such as “what kind of grapes grow here?” and “what do the wines taste like?” And this is exactly what he does, with boldface subheads so you can’t misread anything.

Moreover, the text includes decent maps, color pictures of the regions, label illustrations and what I consider to be dead-on comments on many of the wines. Clarke pulls no punches when he says, for instance, that the wines of Franken in Germany usually aren’t a very good value or that Italy’s Brunello “is more often than not a disappointment.”

A nit-picker might criticize him for writing about some wines we’ll never see in the United States. But since this book was first published in England, this is understandable, if a bit frustrating.

As a first look into the world of wine, this book offers a good cross-section and it’s worth a look.

Another book that handles the same subjects with a lighter-than-usual hand is Kevin Zraly’s fine 1986 work “Windows on the World Complete Wine Course” (Sterling: $18.95, hard cover).

Zraly, the light-hearted wine buyer for the most wine-conscious restaurant in America, anticipates readers’ questions (many of them come from students who take the Windows on the World wine courses he teaches). He answers them with the same wit with which he teaches.

Up the scale a bit in terms of depth are the pocket guides to the various wine regions that Simon & Schuster puts out every year, topped by the masterwork of the genre, “Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Encyclopedia of Wine 1989” ($9.95, hard cover.) It presumes you know something about wine, so it is not a primer, but it is a great friend of the budding wine lover.

Johnson is a droll fellow whose entry into the writing dodge was through a book on gardening. His epic works (“The World Atlas of Wine” and “Hugh Johnson’s Modern Encyclopedia of Wine”) are two of the great efforts in vinous literature, and the pocket guide is a mere sliver of the whole. Still, it gives all of us who have a less-than-perfect memory all we need to sound like an expert.

Started in the Garden

Here’s how it can work: slip it into a vest pocket or purse and hie off to a local eatery. Then make certain your guest has plenty of water to drink. Do not order the wine from the wine list until the companion has offered an excuse-me and has gone off to powder a nose. Then grab both the wine list and pocket guide and quickly note that the 1984 Chateau Lynch-Bages, on the wine list, is ready to drink. Order it.

When companion later notes you have had the good taste to order a Lynch-Bages, you can casually say, “Oh, yes, it’s one of Pauillac’s regular stars.” And then silently thank Johnson for the crib notes.

Also usable in this manner is the “Simon & Schuster Pocket Guide to Spanish Wines” by Jan Read ($9.95), though since Spanish wines are rarely found in restaurants, its better to carry it around to wine shops. Bargains in Spanish wines abound and Read gives good, specific advice. This book is highly recommended for those planning a wine tour of Spain because of its size and its capsuled yet near-comprehensive nature.

Wine literature usually falls into one of four broad categories: education, tasting notes, history and reminiscences.

Little of this is very satisfying to the true wine lover because the educators can sound alike; tasting notes can be dull; history bogs you down in who married whom, and reminiscences can be snobbish (“ I had dinner with the Baron, an old and close personal friend. . . .”)

Case in point: “Chianti: The Land, The People and the Wine” by Raymond Flower ($17.95, Christopher Helm/David and Charles, paperback). A great deal of historical research here is torpedoed by leaden, precious and very self-conscious writing and an attention to trivial detail that would warm the heart of a drill sergeant on showdown inspection.

In endlessly boring and microscopic detail, Flower gives us a look back at much of Chianti culture and its wars and other agonies, and you keep waiting for some reference to wine other than a passing backhand.

Finally in a final, nine-page chapter (obviously an afterthought), Flower rambles over and around the subject of Chianti wine and he very skillfully avoids saying anything meaningful. The message here is: this is not a book about wine at all, and probably is best left to someone doing a master thesis on the Chianti region.

The greatest potential for true wine literature using gracious language and prose that uplifts the soul is in the area of reminisences, and in the last few years a number of such books have come to market that make grand accompaniments to a fireplace and a glass of Sherry.

Notably, Kermit Lynch’s dedicated and contentious “Adventures on the Wine Route,” Eunice Fried’s charming and warm “Burgundy” and Bob Thompson’s personal and engaging “Notes on a California Cellarbook” fill a need.

Now comes a book that combines the educational factor and the prose: “Champagne,” subtitled “The History and Character of the World’s Most Celebrated Wine,” by Serena Sutcliffe (Simon & Schuster: $29.95, hard cover).

It looks more like a coffee table bower, but here Sutcliffe, a British Master of Wine, puts into classic prose all the grace that a flute of sparkling wine can offer. Maps, gorgeous photos and illustrations, vintage analysis and profiles of the major producers (with tasting notes) sparkle in these attractive pages.

A Weighty Volume

A chapter at the rear on serving Champagne with food could well be turned into a full-length cookbook.

All sorts of wine newsletters exist giving ratings on current wines and now a literal literary lead weight is the tasting note list to end all tasting note lists. It’s called “Vintners Club, 14 years of Wine Tastings” (Privately published by Vintners Club: $70, hard cover).

This book is weighty in more ways than one. Not only is it 6 pounds, but it contains the tasting notes from all of the tastings conducted at the Vintners Club in San Francisco since 1973. And for saving for posterity these ratings, Jerome Draper of the Vintners Club and Draper & Esquin, the San Francisco wine merchant, must be congratulated.

Many of the notes are valuable. In a tasting of 12 red Burgundies, for instance, it’s nice to know that one wine received 14 first-place votes of 29 tasters--pretty convincing evidence that it was the top wine. (Nice to know, of course, only if you have some of the wine in question.)

But other things about the book are frustrating. First of all, it is 6 pounds of esoterica. Unless you have a lot of older wine in your cellar, this book can’t do anything to enlighten you about wine. (The last two years of tasting are left out.)

Also, the number of tasters in each event is listed, but usually the number of first-place votes listed do not add up to the number of tasters. Did some tasters not vote? There’s no explanation of the disparity.

Minor irritants aside, however, I find this a valuable book for the dedicated wine collector because of the breadth of the notes and the fact that so many different types of wines were evaluated--Sherry, Port, Spanish reds and more.

The Vintners Club is a tasting group open to merchants, retailers and dedicated wine lovers and meets every Thursday at 4:30 p.m. to evaluate wines.

Only 2,000 copies of this book were printed. To order a copy, send a check for $78.55 (including shipping and tax) to Vintners Club, P.O. Box 3298, San Rafael, Calif. 94912.

Wine of the Week: The 1987 Santa Barbara Winery Chenin Blanc ($7) - For Chardonnay fans who dislike the prices they have to pay, this bone dry wine is a phenomenal substitute. The wine has been treated just like Chardonnay (barrel fermented, aged on the yeast lees, etc.) and the result is slightly melony and very complex. Fool your local wine snob with this one. And it may be seen discounted to about $6. Amazing value.