Andrew Jefford is among the world’s best wine writers. As his newest e book – Consuming with the Valkyries – is launched, Sophie Thorpe caught up with the wordsmith to speak about his profession thus far, the artwork of writing and why he’s so towards scoring
Andrew Jefford isn’t like different wine writers. Browse his Instagram account and also you’ll discover not a bottle in sight. Examine his Twitter and also you’ll discover a regular, quiet stream of haiku – or, as he prefers to explain them, “quick texts”. These feeds are – like Jefford – gently sincere; absent of ego, flash and fanfare. His prose is poised and purposeful, every phrase fastidiously thought-about but by no means weighed down by pointed effort. He’s a rarity on this planet of wine: a author whose (principal) matter occurs to be wine.
“I used to be all the time an enormous reader. It all the time meant extra to me than anything,” Jefford tells me, pondering again to his childhood. However wine was omnipresent. Because the son of a priest, it was part of household life, consumed “on excessive days and holidays”.
“I keep in mind first tasting Champagne with my brother, on the age of 10 or 11,” he says. “It was the primary tasting observe we agreed on: it tasted like vomit. Issues bought higher from then on, fortunately.” The slight, wiry wine author smiles, seeming virtually sheepish in regards to the wines that he’s since loved.
Aged 16, Jefford determined to begin making wine – brewing up grape juice focus and no matter else he might discover– to complement provides at Sunday lunch. The transformative results of fermentation hooked him – but it surely was the idea of terroir that reeled him absolutely in.
He was working at a neighborhood hospital, however after his shift – armed with The Penguin E-book of Wines and André Simon’s A Wine Primer – he’d enterprise out to browse the cabinets of “French Wine Farmers”, a wine store in Norwich. He vividly recollects taking residence a bottle of Chianti and being struck by the magic of travelling via a glass. “That’s filled with wine. And each drop in there got here from a vine in Tuscany. I’m consuming Tuscany!” he recollects pondering.“ And I’ve nonetheless not bought over that. It’s wonderful.”
Wine took a again seat when he set off to check English on the College of Studying, earlier than embarking on each a Masters and PhD. The lure of phrases led him into publishing – a background which, alongside along with his educational strategy, defines his writing in the present day. He spent 4 years “enhancing mediocre copy into one thing readable” – however ultimately had had sufficient, and leapt on the probability to jot down a e book on Port.
From there, he wrote articles for Margaret Rand in Wine Journal, then Decanter, the place he’s now a Contributing Editor and his month-to-month column is the stuff of legend. He was, for numerous years,The Night Commonplace’s drinks author, penned options for The Monetary Occasions and is a daily in The World of Nice Wine. He’s authored a number of books – together with the deservedly totemic The New France. Printed in 2002, it seemed past Burgundy and Bordeaux, shining a lightweight on the nation’s various wine scene at a second when it was going via a revolution. If that wasn’t sufficient, he’s dabbled in radio, presenting for BBC Radio Three and 4.
Whereas wine could be his mainstay, he’s written extensively on whisky and different spirits (together with his revered e book on Islay, Peat Smoke and Spirit), in addition to journey and fragrance. However writing, quite than any explicit matter, is his actual commerce. His editorial expertise has been key: his prose is clever, thought-about and a masterclass in eloquent financial system – one thing that he finds all too usually missing elsewhere.
“One of many issues is that plenty of [wine writing] is on-line, so there aren’t house constraints,” he decries. “[Wine writing] tends to draw fairly massive egos. They do write thrice greater than they should – as a result of they suppose it’s all fantastic.” It’s maybe the dearth of ego in Jefford’s writing that units it aside. He appears to strategy any matter unbiased and open – nonetheless with the wide-eyed pleasure of that first bottle of Chianti. Wine stays, to him, “lifeless thrilling”.
“It’s an important disgrace that pretty early on the remainder of the journalistic world determined that wine was a ghetto,” Jefford laments. “It embraced wine with gusto initially – in all probability within the Nineties – then all of it bought very boring as soon as we handed 2000 and so they simply requested all people to supply suggestions and that’s it. Newspapers are not an important college for wine writing in the best way that they as soon as have been.”
It’s an business, he feels, sorely in want of creativeness. “There’s such a weight of element to speak that individuals by no means get their head above the waves of the element.” And that element, the intricacies of wine – or “its huge equipment of geekdom” – are the problem. He hopes that his newest e book, Consuming with the Valkyries – a set of his work from the final 15 years, “might climb out of the wine ghetto – to anyone who enjoys language, enjoys storytelling, enjoys the interrelation of place and taste that wine can provide”.
However, by his personal admission, wine is “by no means going to be a mass market widespread topic”. Whereas the business was lengthy obsessive about discovering its personal “Jamie Oliver” – somebody to deliver wine to the lots, meals is a necessary a part of life – “whereas wine want be part of no one’s life”.
Wine has, undoubtedly, come a great distance – “vastly democratised” – however he worries in regards to the “high finish of issues”, the place wine has change into so unique as to be “virtually a plutocracy”. Wine criticism, for him, is intricately linked to the class’s self-imposed segregation, with “its relentless concentrate on factors, excellence and issues being higher than different issues – hierarchy, quite than distinction”.
He’s lengthy been vocal about scoring, feeling like Hugh Johnson that – though they might be of sensible use to shoppers, who undoubtedly need them – they’re “philosophically untenable” and “disempowering”.
“You’re being misled to some extent in case you suppose the 96-point wine is all the time higher than the 94-point wine. It’s miles extra sophisticated than that,” says Jefford, who scores wines reluctantly.“ And fairly often the 89-point wine may be higher than both the 96- or 94-point wine.” His recommendation to wine drinkers is straightforward: “Belief your palate.”
Regardless of his spectacular resume and easy mind, Jefford’s modesty shines via in our dialog – as we sprint from the hazards of local weather change (“Distress all through the Third World – however the Bordelais and Bourguignons are raking it in”) to an interesting co-fermented 15-variety mix from a Lirac property (Ch. de Montfaucon’s Vin de Mr le Baron). And whereas the 68-year-old could be softly pensive within the written – and spoken – phrase, there’s such vitality to the person himself.
He’s invariably described as a wine thinker, a philosopher-cum-writer, in addition to – in fact – a poet; but it surely’s not possible to pigeon-hole Jefford, his concepts, or his voice.
Andrew Jefford’s e book Consuming with the Valkyries, revealed by Académie du Vin, is out now.
