Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France
Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France
Customer Review: Adventures on the Wine Route
I bought this book for my daughter as a Xmas present,
and she loves it as it is so well written. I must add
that she takes a keen interest in wines and viticulture.
Customer Review: A wine classic
Kermit Lynch is an institution on the US wine scene, and his retail shop is a must visit for any serious wine lover. He made his reputation importing wonderful wines and in particular writing this often reviewed book. Rather than summarizing, or relating how much it’s meant to my own education, let me quote a few of my favorite passages from my wine diary:
We Americans with our New World innocence and democratic sensibilities tend to think all wines are created equal and that differences in quality are simply a matter of individual taste.
The French with their aristocratic heritage, their experience and tradition approach wine from another point of view. Just as France had its kings, noblemen and commoners, French wine has its grands cr?s, premiers curs, and there is even an official niche for the commoners, the vins de table.
Wine is, above all, pleasure. Those who would make it ponderous make it dull. People talk about the mystery of wine, yet most don’t want anything to do with mystery. They want it all there in one sniff, one taste. If you keep an open mind and take each wine on its own terms, there is a world of magic to discover.
There is only one possible explanation for this mysterious transfer of aromatic quality from one type of vegetation to another [the taste of currants in a Gevrey-Chambertin wine]. Bees! The bees gather nectar from blossoms - in this case, wild-currant blossom - then they alight on the grape blossoms, their little legs fuzzy with pollen from the currants.
Quoting Ren? Loyau.
`Wine is so very rich in nourishment. What I don’t use for cooking I feed to my plants.’ Her plants appear to be abnormally healthy.
Quoting Madame de Lacaussade.
The taste of the grape told them when to harvest. The taste of the wine told them when to bottle, what sort of oak to employ, the appropriate barrel size, how to prune the different grape varieties, and on and on and on. The traditions varied from village to village depending on differences of grape variety, soil, and microclimate. The traditions that were in place at the beginning of the twentieth century were the result of centuries of trial and error. If the taste of a wine indicated that a steep, stony piece of land produced better wine, then that was the land they worked, regardless of the labor involved. . . . Do not think for a moment that they were ignorant people who did not know better. They seem to have been instinctively directed toward quality. Only in this century have we seen the hard-earned knowledge of the ancients discarded, almost overnight, in the name of progress.
Beaujolais should not be a civilized society lady; it is the one-night stand of wine.
One’s every word and gesture will be examined microscopically for the telling nuance. Even when a Burgundian asks with a warm smile, `How are you?’, the antennae are out, the cerebral computer is plugged in, and even if you reply ` Fine,’ your slightest inflection is noticed, inspected, measured, interpreted.
Chablis is so good with oysters
That I’m tempted to leave these cloisters
And find true love whe’ere I’m apt to.
Tenth century poetic fragment.
Real wine is more than an alcoholic beverage. When you taste one from a noble terroir that is well made, that is intact and alive, you think here is a gift of nature, the fruit of the vine eked out of our earth, ripened by our sun, fashioned by man.
Unlike music, literature or visual arts, a great wine does not require a creative genius. A farmer working his piece of earth can produce something inspiring and profound.
There is so much contained in a glass of good wine. It is a gift of nature that tastes of man’s foibles, his sense of the beautiful, his idealism and virtuosity.
