Journal of Wine Economics Volume 16 | 2021 | No. 3

How La Place will evolve in the future would appear to hang on a number of factors, such as the evolving bargaining power of specific châteaux vis-a-vis the négociants, the effect of climate change on the variance of production and quality, the willingness of individual châteaux to muddy their hands by dealing directly with the retailer or (heaven forbid!) the final consumer, and significantly, the arrival of new producers. La Place no longer sells just Bordeaux. Bordeaux-like blends such as Opus One were among the first entrants, but now wines from Argentina, California, Chile, and Italy are common. The economics of information and distribution matters just as much as culture.

With that in mind, I went back and re-read Joe Fattorini in the first section on Vintages. Now here’s someone with a very different style from the likes of Cyril Ray, Hugh Johnson, Edmund Penning-Rowsell, or Michael Broadbent himself, all of whom make appearances in the volume (some several), not always with unwaver- ing claims on my literary attention span. Fattorini, self-described as Obi Wine Kenobi, declares in a second essay elsewhere in the book that he interviewed Anthony Barton of Chateau Léoville-Barton in blue Lycra shorts (Fattorini in the shorts, not Barton, I hasten to clarify), just before running the Medoc marathon. In passing, that’s an essay I read with great delight, and I know you will too—you can try and pair it, as I did, with protagonist Shizuku Tanzaki’s mad Médoc run in Vol. 24 of that cult manga classic, The Drops of God, and will come away rewarded, if somewhat breathless.

But I digress. The first of Fattorini’s two contributions, which is somewhat mis- placed in the section on “The Power of the Vintage,” is an equally breathless account of the economics of Bordeaux’s futures. The curtain is drawn back on the vintage of 2008, one of moderate respectability, although of course, this is not to be divined at the time. All through 2008, the ups and downs of the weather (not to mention the financial crisis) kept speculation on edge. We are introduced to Joe Fattorini’s friend, David, who has just acquired 100 cases of Château Lafite Rothschild 2008 en primeur in the spring of 2009—not for personal consumption, we are assured. He is about to see what happens to the price. I get to learn why wine speculation is so attractive: it turns out that the U.K.’s Inland Revenue allows capital gains on a “wasting asset” like wine to run off scot-free. (To be fair, you cannot write off losses either against your tax bill.) Mouth agape, I just googled Inland Revenue to confirm that a “wasting asset” is one “with a predictable life of 50 years or less,” which places us in an interesting position with respect to red wine, but we shall not concern ourselves with such fiscal niceties here.

Back to David, then, who has just shelled out the original release price of £2,100 per case for his Château Lafite. A year later, the price was at £14,250 per case, a gain of 700%. David had walked away by then at some unrevealed anterior date. This monstrous gain was driven by the Chinese market. Indeed, China plays a central role in the modern history of Bordeaux. With China’s rise in the world economy came an immense international demand for fine red wine, and Bordeaux was at the heart of this demand shift, reaching a crescendo in the early 2010s. With that

Johnson is not only one of the most prolific wine writers, but he is also one of the most literary. Chapter 33, “Methode Champenoise,” begins with this description of a scene shortly after the abdication of Napoleon: “The sun rising over Champagne on the September 10th 1815 found something more stirring to illuminate than the usual placid dewy vines, their leaves yellowing and their grapes turning old for the approaching harvest…where the first light had touched the little hill…, a seemingly endless army was assembling…The light of dawn flashed on the cuirasses of hussars and glowed on the bearskins of great-coated grenadiers” (p. 332). Passages like this are not only a pleasure to read but help the reader conjure up mental images that might partially offset the lack of illustrations.

At the same time, while impressed at the sheer scope and depth of the coverage, I feel that more could have been added in the update despite Johnson’s reasoning. There are only three references to China listed in the index. The first reduces the early events in that country to a single page inset entitled “Far Cathay” (p. 28). The second is a reference to tea, not wine, and the third, to the number of bottles packed in a hamper sent to China. Surely room could have been made in Chapter 42, “New World Challenges,” for an overview of the burgeoning wine industry in one of the world’s largest wine markets.

In the Foreword, Roberts acknowledges that “No one could be better qualified to write the story of wine than Hugh Johnson whose name is synonymous with wine writing” (p. 7). True enough. “There is tremendous scholarship to be found in these pages, but the immense learning is never ponderous. It is erudite, but never pompous,” he maintains (p. 7). Also true, but it is not light reading. Readers should have at least an intermediate level of wine knowledge as well as more than a passing knowledge of the world and especially European history and geography. Without the slightest hesitation, Johnson casually references wines and wineries as well as major events throughout history, assuming that they are common knowledge. Admittedly, it is on the reader to fill in the blanks, but doing so while engaging with the dense text can be distracting and break the flow of the story.

Nevertheless, armed with a rare depth of knowledge and understanding, Johnson admirably, skillfully, and literarily undertook the formidable task of summarizing the development and expansion of viticulture and enology since biblical times. Particularly in the insets, he larded and leavened his saga with enough trivia, facts, and factoids to make the reader, depending on the guests, either a genius or a bore at the next dinner party. But despite its title, this is only one story of wine, obvi- ously limited to the interests and perspectives of the author, as he admits, and one that is distinctly Eurocentric. Johnson’s rationale: “I was drawing a line between regions where wine had evolved through history and regions where it was an import based on what was being done elsewhere – almost all in Europe” (p. 14). While that continent is where a lot of the action has been happening, it is certainly not the only one, especially since the original publication date. Perhaps there is a non-European counterpart to Johnson who will pick up the story someday and celebrate the contributions of those in less obvious but equally important places.

“To the Table at Last,” Chapter 7, is a quartet of essays by three Brits and one of the most distinguished American wine writers of the last century. Jane MacQuitty ponders To Decant or Not to Decant? (2019). Hugh Johnson’s Beyond the Banyan Tree (1980) is a remembrance of a dinner organized by the Zinfandel Club, during which a selection of notable California vintages was served. Californian Gerald Asher recounts the challenges of serving the best from our collections at a multicourse dinner in Wine on Wine (1996). As in Berry’s story, Broadbent’s tasting notes of some of the clarets and California cabernets are included. Spurrier’s Memorable Menus (2019) will leave the reader both envious and incredu- lous as to how anyone could consume that much and still live to write about it.

Chapter 8, “Something a Little Different,” is the shortest, with just two very brief essays. Sting Like a Bee (2019) by Dan Keeling considers high alcohol wines. Jonathan Miles offers Mint Julep, A Cocktail to Crave (2008), as his complete depar- ture from the subject of the book.

Chapter 9 looks at “Wine and Art” from four perspectives. Australian Andrew Caillard MW, who is also a painter, explores Art, Wine and Me (2019). The editor’s introduction, of course, includes the inevitable wordplay: “The palate and the palette have been tools of his trade for over 40 years” (p. 166). American wine writer Elin McCoy contemplates Is Wine Art? (2018) and reveals a third side to this coin. The backstory of the decision to put art on the labels of Château Mouton Rothschild is disclosed in Best Dressed and Bottled at Home (1984) extracted from Milady Vine, the Autobiography of Phillippe de Rothschild by Joan Littlewood. Canadian Tony Aspler writes about one Mouton label in For a Piece of the Glamour (1997) with an ending that could come straight from O. Henry.

A trio of essays comprises the final chapter, “Wine and the Poets.” Baudelaire is the focus of Wine and the Outcast Poet (2009) by Giles MacDonogh. Colette and Wine (1983) by Alice Wooledge Salmon offers vinously-inflected highlights of the life of a talented but controversial character. We are cautioned that “just as one’s pleasure in rare wine can be blunted by undue dissection, so various critics have taken Colette to absurdities in their haste after ‘psychoanalysis’ of both woman and achievement” (p. 211). In any case, one can certainly lust after some of the bottles she encountered. Harry Eyres discusses Roman poet Horace in In Vino Veritas (2014).

In Vino Veritas is a gorgeous package, stunningly illustrated with exquisite color and historic black and white photographs and handsomely bound with a blue ribbon marker. I did find a few minor editing issues, however. On p. 46, “vineyard” has a typo, on p. 66 “to this” is repeated, and a caption refers to its illustration in the wrong direction (p. 85). Nits to be sure but unexpected given how carefully the book was otherwise compiled.