Wine writing at its best

For some years now I have bemoaned the demise of ‘proper’ wine writing and until quite recently I thought I would soon be penning its obituary.

- Raymond Blake

By ‘proper’ I mean something that was more than a shopping list dressed up as a wine column. My despondent mood was prompted by seeing newspaper columns descend to the lowest common denominator, wine-of-the-week writing, consisting of little more than a few paragraphs of introduction followed by that week’s favoured bottles. A knee-jerk response was to blame the writers or even the editors, but a little reflection suggested that hard-nosed commercial reality had clipped their wings. Space was at a premium. Advertising had to be sold. The era of long, lofty musings prompted by long, bibulous lunches was over.

Lofty musings may have had their day, and may be mourned by few, but lunch goes on and it was over a short, though modestly bibulous lunch with my late and much missed friend Steven Spurrier that I first detected a glimmer of hope for wine writing that, in addition to providing a good read, might deliver a morsel of insight to give the reader a deeper understanding of the wine and region being written about. And if such writing came from an accomplished pen then some modest literary value might flow through it also.

I was in London with my wife, who was rehearsing for a concert with The World Orchestra for Peace at the Royal Albert Hall, when Steven got in touch to suggest lunch, in the process effortlessly scuppering my plan to go exploring some London wine shops. A convenient venue was chosen and, once the pleasantries had been exchanged, the conversation ranged wide, diverting at some length into which sherry we should start with, before settling on Steven’s latest project, spoken of and elaborated on with the compelling belief and enthusiasm he brought to every plan that interested him.