Dibdin, Barbaresco and good wine writing

A couple of months ago I read an Obituary in the Irish Times for Michael Dibdin. It was a completely brilliant read. It sold me on an author I had never read. Indeed a recently, and now permanently, dead one at that. Sad? I don't know. Dibdin's writings don't die.

Micheal Didbin 1947 -2007

Subsequent to the obit. I bought a couple of Dibdin paperback's in a second hand bookstore on Charing Cross Road, London. I was over for a tasting - miles away, but I can never resist a warm afternoon on Charing Cross ....

As it happened one of the books I purchased is titled 'A Long Finish'. It relates an Aurelio Zen murder mystery set in vineyards around Asti in Piedmont. It's a romp and good one at that. The wine detail is entirely accurate and modern. Mind you he does give an acknowledgment to Jancis Robinson for getting the wine end of things tidy.

This set me thinking about good writing. Here's a well researched novel where plot and characters are set into a technical wine world. Dibdin chose which bits of the wine world were relevant to his novel. He then decided how to use all of the available detail. It's a great skill and Dibdin certainly displays it well in 'A Long Finish'.

What then is 'good wine writing'? Is it a collection of facts; is it about those guys who have somehow managed to taste all of the best wines in the world; is it about opinion; does a good writer need to be a good reviewer/taster; is it about being published; is it about a story and how it's presented? Is it fact or fiction? I suppose it's all of these and more.

Good wine writing for me is something that's readable and relevant. A bit like Kris Kristofferson's quote ' if it sounds country it is country'. If it sounds like wine writing it is wine writing but is it readable and more to the point is it worth reading? Let's face it a lot of country is simply just - a lot of country.

I don't read Robert Parker's Wine Advocate. Correct me if I'm wrong but I reckon it's a bit of a surprise to Parker that so many try to! Equally I don't read the telephone book. They're reference books. Don't read them.

I like originality and well phrased sentences. I abhor inaccuracies. I love a story. I have no time for recycled press releases being fobbed off as wine writing; reviewing, or God forbid, opinion.

I'm normal.

Why, oh why, then is so much published about so little? No one seems capable of writing an ordinary wine story any longer. Writers seem to have to search out the obscure and fanciful. Maybe that's why Andrew Jefford is so well received? He talks about the ordinary man in the field. He tells a story.

Reviewers seems to think that its somehow relevant to publish tasting impressions of wines that less than 00000.1% of the wine drinking population is ever going to drink or even be bothered with! Those reviews should be put into the Advocate. That's what it's there for.

I'm calming down. I'm in a small country and to a large extent we don't have any wine writers. We do have some brilliant writers. Good on you Anne Enright....... We have brilliant story tellers and fantastic stories. I often wonder why these luminaries aren't encouraged to write our wine columns for us. Because they're not technically proficient; couldn't be bothered; want to do their 'thing'; don't want to be seen as 'colour' writers; because there are good enough wine writers out there already? All of these and more.

Come on guys make yourselves relevant to more than a few officianados. Cross over into mainstream and make wine writing as much an art form as the product you're writing about. Bring it alive; make it sexy; burn the midnight oil; forget convention; get excited every now and then; develop new 'stereotypes'!

Begin by asking a few questions : you might develop a few answers.

Limerick to Stormhoek

I sent a couple of Limerick's in to a 'Harpers Weekly' competition recently. They went like this:

Whiskey should always have an E,
It’s so very easy to see.
It shows a 3 times distill,
Satisfaction to the fill;
Irish before Scotch for me!

More to the heart and quite a bit more truthful was the second one….

God; should I believe in Stelvin or Corks?
Tradition or the study of Quorks?
(think i’ll just drink the wine
if it smells and tastes fine)
Read the experts; I’m OK; they say it’s fine.

The whiskey one reminded me of how Ireland is removed from the most important bit of the wine trade. Namely grape growing. It's a shame. We miss out on the whole love thing that goes with being close to the product.

Hey, Black Bush. You're still my favourite.
See, this is what I'm talking about. I can still remember getting dumped by my college sweetheart and getting through a bottle of this stuff. I still felt good enough about it all that when I dropped into the distillery a short time later I remembered the whiskey and not the girl. OK I'm lying. But it's a good story.
I can visit, touch and feel Bushmills. I can't get near a vineyard. We don't have any in Ireland. (well, almost none: sorry to David Llewellyn and everyone in Lusk!)

We defend Irish whiskey like it's our own. (It's actually owned by gazillions of overseas dollars. Bushmills was a recent pawn given up by Pernod Ricard to Diageo so they could go on and spend more gazillions on other peoples' memories. )

We get real nationalistic and tribal when we talk of our own. Move over Scotty we're Irish..... Yeah Irish is better than Scotch. Which it isn't but it's what makes so much of the wine trade great to work with. People still farm the product that makes the wine. Often they make the wine themselves and then get into their car and go around the world selling the stuff. Its a personal odyssey that we can join up with. It's personal, passionate and intensely nationalistic. National anthems have been written for less.

Family wine makers use things that the corporate world just doesn't like or indeed 'get'. They get to know their customers; they talk about love of the product; they relate the wine to the land, to the taste and then to themselves.

I love the recent take on Stormhoek by the good people at Orbital. Stormhoek (http://www.stormhoek.com/) is a South African wine that was succesfully marketed to bloggers. It sells through traditional channels. To a large extent it sells by recommendation. Lot's of these are from one person to another who are complete cyber strangers. At first it seems to be the antithesis of the personalised wine trade. Look closer and you find a whole lot of people cosying up to each other over shared passions. Then along comes Blue Monster.

Blue Monster is a 'biz card' cartoon written by a quixotic blog philosopher called Hugh McLeod http://www.gapingvoid.com/. He's also the marketing strategist behind Stormhoek's success in cyber world. It seems that Microsoft nerds not only love the idea of Blue Monster (adopted it as their mascot) but now relate well to a Stormhoek wine label created for them with the little blue fella on it.

Isn't this the same idea as nationalism? Flying their flag for beliefs and sharing a bottle of wine in the process. Passion and pride. It's so uncorporate! A cry from the depths. The republic of Stormhoek has opened a consulate in Microsoft.

The nasty face of nationalism is fascism. The wine trade does not like CRAV threatening to kill people and overturning vats and bombing railways in the South of France. It does like South of France wine makers defending their patch.

Bring on the Blue Monster

Bring on Stormhoek

Long Live Bushmills