The Juice: Vinous Veritas

"Yes, Jay Mclnerney is a Cavalier. I’ve chosen his third collection of writing about wine, The Juice . They’re all fun. They’re all very well written because Jay is a very good writer, and doesn’t take it too seriously. I’ve chosen the last one because, I think, his taste in wine and knowledge of wine has matured. He’s funny, and I know, because he is a friend—I’ve drunk with him a lot and I’ve drunk a lot with him—that he really respects wine and loves it. In fact, he can sometimes actually slightly bore me with wine because I think that wine is for drinking, not necessarily for talking about. I slightly shy away from dinners where everyone around the table is going to want to talk about nothing but, ‘Don’t you think this vintage is slightly better? And didn’t they put slightly less Merlot in this one?’ I spend the day writing about this sort of thing, and that’s, perhaps, why, in the evening, I want the pleasure of wine, rather than to be reminded of the theory of wine. Each time a new wine is poured, you would talk about it for perhaps five minutes max. Then you’d go on to the gossip, and just really enjoying the sensual pleasure of it. He was one of the Wall Street Journal’ s wine writers. It’s sometimes travel, but it’s mainly about the wine itself and the people. I mean, the people in wine are more interesting than people in ball bearings, in my experience. There are lots of stories to tell. I think you can tell what his shtick is just by the headings under which he groups these collected articles. He starts with “Acid Trips” then “Grape Nuts.” He’s writing with a nice light touch, but now he’s really quite knowledgeable too, so that’s fun. Just for fun, but you’d learn something, definitely. It says the essays in this book were previously published in House and Garden, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Ritz Carlton Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal. That’s where they all come from. It’s a nice bit of recycling, but unlike most collections, they do actually bear rereading. Well, I’m sorry. I can’t read German. Britain has a long tradition of writing about wine, having been a major trader in it. And the French, I think, are a little bit too reverential. They don’t criticise enough in their books. They’re not translated into English, for a start. For your selection, you do want your books in English, don’t you? I think the French have taken wine for granted, whereas for the English, it is more exotic. There is a certain sense in which a grand French writer would not devote a book to wine. It would be a bit like devoting a book to potatoes. There are one or two lovely books, say, on Burgundy. But they are more workmanlike, something for a professional, rather than a great read. There are masses at the moment—like Sideways —and an awful lot in which wine plays a part. I can’t think of any that I’ve really, really enjoyed because usually I read them and I go, ‘Oh, they got that fact wrong.’ I always admire it if I do read a reference to wine in fiction and it’s correct. It’s quite rare, but it’s great. It shows that either they know, or they’ve got a friend who knows. Michael Dibdin wrote thrillers, his detective was Aurelio Zen . He got me to read the full manuscript of one book that he set in Piemonte. Yes, although Cheval Blanc usually has a majority of cabernet franc, I suppose. Perhaps he meant it that way. I hear there’s going to be a theatre production of Sideways here. I was very pleased because I think it is in page 2 of Sideways—it doesn’t come out in the movie, unfortunately, but in the book—as he’s packing for his road trip, he puts a copy of The Oxford Companion to Wine into his suitcase."