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Real Wine - The Rediscovery of Natural Winemaking
- Patrick Matthews
Mitchell Beazley 2000
Review by David Farmer
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This is one of a number of wine books published over the last few years, mostly by English authors, which take the view that there is a correct way to make wine and this is only known and followed by a small number of dedicated winemakers. The core of the argument is that big company winemaking produces ‘industrial’ wines and these lack character, while true wine is made by the artisanal wine maker using tools and methods, often ancient, which reflect the unique character of the site.
This idea is presented as a ‘rediscovery’. I do not think however that it was ever lost. It is generally accepted that the grower-winemaker who concentrates on a small area of vines that are favourably located will make better wine than a large company handling millions of cases. The model that this book returns to again and again is Burgundy, and the wineries referred to make wonderful wines in tiny volumes and they are expensive. With that said, the large company that puts resources towards bringing out the best from special vineyards can also make amazing wines. Penfolds Grange is a fine example, though this is dismissed as ‘…. in order to match the overpriced red Grange…’, meaning I suppose that it is not so special and thus is overpriced. What large companies have achieved is to give wine drinkers well made, flavoured wines at affordable prices. And that is what 99% of the world’s consumers want.
I have read the book twice and am still not sure why it was written. I believe it may have something to do with recognition in the London wine scene. To be taken seriously it seems you must have published a number of books. This is the hard part as every wine angle has been written about a great number of times. And this means that a lot of books published are rather silly.
A number of grower-wine makers are identified who make very good wine, in France and the U.S.A., and who follow similar principles. Thus if everyone followed these principles real wine would be everywhere. Alas it would also be very expensive. A big theme in this book is snobbery and the case is built by selective quoting. The case is; follow bio-dynamic ideas, have vineyards full of multiple vine clones, shun technical ways, use wild yeasts, and return to mother earth and her natural cycles. Further it is implied that only wine made this way is good for you.
Now a lot of these thoughts receive serious attention in the largest wine companies. They are very conscious of long term vineyard management but rightly baulk at the science of Rudolph Steiner that encourages the burial of dung filled cow horns in the vineyard and bottling under moon cycles.
A few quotes are useful to understand the author’s thoughts. When discussing the consequences of the use of herbicides, pesticides in vineyards we are told, “..there is less microbial life in some Burgundian vineyards than in the Sahara desert”. This is not believable. On the use of rotary fermenters, which are an advanced method of producing soft and drinkable wines, we are told it is ‘industrialisation’. About other technical triumphs we are told, “This is because they were invented to cut labour costs and save money rather than to make better wine”. This statement is wrong. And later when talking about the common practise of pumping over to extract colour and flavour from the grape pulp that rises to the top of the tank during fermentation, “Why should anyone pump over a tank instead of punching it down.” Because the pump over method is in many cases better. On the use of wild yeasts I was recently told by one of our best artisanal winemakers that cultured yeast strains were one of the most important wine advances in the last 50 years. My own selective quote, yes, but remember that dozens of wild yeasts alter the grapes true flavours and all the hand wringing that goes on in this book about leaving it to mother nature does not help much when the wine tastes are altered and often ruined.
There are some lovely stories about wine merchants and wine makers although they seem very dated. The great American wine merchant Frank Schoomaker is well worth remembering but quoting from a book he wrote in 1934 does not lift the debate very high. Neither does reference to the books of Alex Lichine written in 1952 and 1967.
A few backhanders to Australians and our wine writer James Halliday are simply silly although they may go down well with the home crowd. There are numerous other wild comments that are not true and pages of stuff that belongs in Private Eye as part of ‘Pseuds Corner’.
Do we need to be told by a wine journalist that ‘many of the new, exciting and heavily-promoted wine brands are rubbish.’ Or by someone who has no scientific knowledge that ‘the war on bacteria is in some cases being waged at the expense of public health, depriving people of desirable immunities.’ Perhaps he would rather have us die as we sip the last of the real wine.
While many of the thoughts suggest the author is a technophobe and maybe has wandered down to the back garden to talk to pixies at least enthusiasm is shown about making good wine and a love of its appreciation and that is good. |
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Ten Company Histories and Biographies of Our Wine Pioneers
- *(see note for details)
Review by David Farmer
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In the wine business 50 years is too short for reflection while one hundred years spans several generations and covers a wide variety of trading conditions. Companies that are still family owned and trading after 100 years are the rare survivors and it was at this point that most of them commissioned a company history. Many great contributors to the Australian wine history, and to single out one, Alexander Kelly's Tintara, did not survive for long and we know little about them.
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The Romance of Wine
- H. Warner Allen
Ernest Benn Limited, London, 1931
Review by David Farmer
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'When the Portuguese are really enjoying themselves, they sing and dance to a noise resembling that of a heavy bombardment, and in a festival in the mountains at Amarante I was completely deafened by the unceasing roar of about sixty sheepskin drums beaten furiously, broken by violent dynamite explosions.'
This is Warner Allen’s picture of the locals in the Douro region who enjoy letting off rockets with sticks of dynamite attached when celebrating. Any book that discovered a tradition like that has something interesting to say.
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Ancient Wine, The Search for the Origins of Viniculture
- Patrick E. McGovern
Princeton University Press, 2003
Review by David Farmer
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We do not know when humans first began to enjoy fermented wine beverages. Ancient Wine traces the origin of the deliberate making of alcohol back to the early Neolithic, about 7000 years ago. A seasonal or occasional drinking of alcoholic beverages probably goes back much further as many fruits collected in a container would ferment naturally. The current warm cycle of the ice age commenced about 10,000 years ago and this also marked a change, in a region of the Middle East, when humans turned from nomadic hunter gatherers to the first permanent settlements based around the cultivation of cereal crops. It is suggested that the earliest permanent settlements began in Eastern Turkey in the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. more...
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In Praise of Wine
- Alec Waugh
1959, (Cassel)
Review by David Farmer
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In Praise of Wine is a book of personal reminiscences about wine and follows the style of the educated amateurs who wrote before and immediately after the Second World War. This book though was published in 1959 and has crossed into an era in which wine books were beginning to contain detailed descriptions of wine regions and technical aspects of wine making, the forerunners of today’s large wine publishing industry. This in turn heralded the end of the amateur commentator. more...
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The New France A Complete Guide to Contemporary French Wine
- Andrew Jefford
Mitchell Beazley 2002
Review by David Farmer
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How strange to divide wine writers into a wine left or right. It will help you to enjoy the early chapters of this book if you have a soft left interpretation of the world wine industry, and enjoy railing against the globalisation of wine, the sameness of taste, the industrialisation of wine and a future driven by world wide brands. This book takes the proposition that the true way to make wine comes from those who bond with the ground, who work the vineyard night and day, break their backs, and by so doing achieve in almost a religious sense a bonding with the earth, the place and the wine produced. more...
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Penfolds-The Rewards of Patience
- Andrew Caillard M.W.
(Fifth Edition)
Review by David Farmer
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In the simplest term this is a consumers guide to all the Penfolds red and white wines. The tasting notes cover wines made by Penfolds in the 1950's right through to the current releases. There are tasting notes for every wine, apart from the Rawsons Retreat wines, the Koonunga Hill whites and one or two others which I detect the winemakers wish they did not have to make under the Penfolds banner. Others wines such as the Penfolds Old Vine Semillon which were part of edition 4 have been dropped off. more...
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Classification of Australian Wines
- Dan Murphy
Macmillan 1974
Review by David Farmer
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I’m a bit of a collector of wine books and recently purchased a first edition signed by Dan Murphy and by the great Hunter vigneron Max Lake. It cost $20.00 from the Berkelouw bookstore on Oxford Street, Sydney, where I buy a lot of second-hand wine books. I first read this book in 1975. Back then it was seen as a bold attempt to classify Australian vineyards and wines in a hierarchical system similar to the French appellation classification. It was a very useful book. Thirty years on it acts as a timepiece and is worth reviewing to see how the wine industry has evolved. more...
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Real Wine - The Rediscovery of Natural Winemaking
- Patrick Matthews
Mitchell Beazley 2000
Review by David Farmer
|
|
This is one of a number of wine books published over the last few years, mostly by English authors, which take the view that there is a correct way to make wine and this is only known and followed by a small number of dedicated winemakers. The core of the argument is that big company winemaking produces ‘industrial’ wines and these lack character, while true wine is made by the artisanal wine maker using tools and methods, often ancient, which reflect the unique character of the site. more...
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Ten Company Histories and Biographies of Our Wine Pioneers
- *(see note for details)
Review by David Farmer
|
|
In the wine business 50 years is too short for reflection while one hundred years spans several generations and covers a wide variety of trading conditions. Companies that are still family owned and trading after 100 years are the rare survivors and it was at this point that most of them commissioned a company history. Many great contributors to the Australian wine history, and to single out one, Alexander Kelly's Tintara, did not survive for long and we know little about them.
more...
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