The following review by Tony Hendra of "The Accidental Connoisseur" by Lawrence
Osborne is in tomorrow's New York Times Book Review. Sounds like an interesting
book (though I'm surprised at the idea of Neal Rosenthal as ''the American wine
world's fiercest and most articulate iconoclast.''). Hope I'm not violating any
copyrights.
Dale


'The Accidental Connoisseur': The Reign of Terroir
By TONY HENDRA

Published: March 28, 2004

Great wine writing is extraordinarily rare. Ovid, A. J. Liebling, Marcus
Aurelius -- that about does it (depending where you stand on Rabelais). Enough
only for one of those famous thin books like ''The Battlefield Victories of
Charles de Gaulle'' or ''The Joy of Irish Sex.'' Lawrence Osborne is undaunted,
however; he sets out to make ''Great Wine Writing'' a good deal thicker.

Osborne, a journalist whose previous books include ''Paris Dreambook'' and
''American Normal,'' embarks on an oeno-odyssey through several major regions
of wine production (Napa, Bordeaux, Piedmont) and others not so celebrated
(Languedoc, Lazio, Puglia). He drinks heartily with wine producers in each
place. He presents himself as a wine naif, brought up in a wine-hostile
environment (the Home Counties of England). His quest is to discover what good
taste in wine really means, and whether he has any himself.

Pretty straightforward. But no sooner is Osborne tippling with his first wine
producer (Antonio Terni of Le Terrazze in the Italian Marches) than the
conversation dives into the thorny question of ''terroir'' (literally
''land''). ''Terroirists,'' as their opponents call them, believe that soil and
microclimate are the chief determining factors of a wine's quality. On the
other side are those who think that grape varieties and what's done in the
winery are the crucial elements. These wines, Terni says, are ''like airport
architecture''; they have ''a sort of nowhereness.'' Italians call such wines
internazionale, which is a polite way of saying ''big, fruity stuff that
Americans like.'' Terni is proud to make both kinds. He adds, ''I do hate all
this pseudo-intellectual mental masturbation about wine.''

Long pause. So our wine naif is familiar with the better wines of an obscure
Italian region best known for an undistinguished plonk called Verdicchio? He
can hold his own in a debate that's been roiling the wine world for years? And
what's this about one kind of wine for Europeans and another for Americans? Is
wine An Issue? As in the widening culture gap between America and Europe? And
what does that ''mental masturbation'' crack mean? Isn't being able to judge
wine the sine qua non of a thoroughly modern sophisticate? Perhaps these are
deeper waters than we expect.

The suspicion grows as ''The Accidental Connoisseur'' rolls on. It becomes
clear that Osborne not only knows a great deal about wine, but cares about it a
great deal too. And he has a wicked ear. Osborne's encounters are often
priceless. There are the episcopal vacuities of Robert Mondavi, quoting
Petronius, agreeing that he has single-handedly ''Europeanized California,''
yet unfavorably comparing an Echezeaux from the Cote d'Or with his own pinot
noir. There's the suave Tuscan cynicism of the Marchese Antinori, the bland
arrogance of the Big-Chateaux Bordelais, the techno-ravings of the Sonoman
marketer Leo McCloskey, with his digitalized cellars and the ''engineering
specs'' of Chateau Lafite. ''I tell you,'' McCloskey says of the crazy things
his competitors do, ''it's a struggle to keep things real.''

Osborne's harmless, bumbling persona allows him to make the required
genuflections to the mighty of the wine world, while encouraging them to
pontificate themselves into very deep holes. It also lets him say with impunity
far from complimentary things about overrated wines like Mondavi's Opus One and
Antinori's Tignanello. But he's not just having fun. The same innocent abroad
in the wine world elicits confidences that subjects might not share with
someone more aggressive. California's premier wine maverick, Randall Grahm of
Bonny Doon Vineyard, is uncharacteristically wistful: ''I wish we had
terroir,'' he says of American wines. ''But we don't. I'd like to make a
terroir wine before I die.''

Brooding over Osborne's adventure like an implacable Greek god -- the
anti-Dionysus, perhaps -- is the ''all-powerful'' American wine critic Robert
Parker, who sees himself as the Ralph Nader of wine, the incorruptible
gatekeeper of the American palate.

Wherever Osborne goes, Parker looms in the background. In Northern California
he's a force as reliable as the laws of physics. In France and Italy, where
Osborne's heart really belongs (despite some dutiful anti-anti-Americanism),
Parker is seen as a tyrant, a man with ''grotesque'' methodology and a guru
(not a compliment in France, where it has a distinct whiff of Jim Jones). What
drives Europeans craziest are Parker's famous scores, which over here are his
chief claim to fame; more so than his unreadable wine reviews, with their
bizarre olfactory images. Osborne observes that for Parker wines can taste of
''melted asphalt,'' ''crushed seashells'' and ''concentrated meat essences.''
These are all adulatory terms.

In his best chapter, ''An Idea of France,'' Osborne weaves together the
love-hate relationship between France and America and Parker's embodiment of
it, paying the necessary obeisance to the man he calls The Nose while subtly
signaling his skepticism about Parker's Brobdingnagian faculties.

In the second part of his book, Osborne concentrates on French and Italian
winemakers who are small, creative, fiercely independent and resistant to
''international'' pressures. Just as our wine naif is actually a passionate
amateur (in the classic sense of ''lover''), his journey is really a sequence
of encounters that gently build a case about what makes wine good. And because
part of his case is to have found international mega-wines wanting, and since
their most energetic advocate is Robert Parker, this is also a low-key argument
against the increasing global homogeneity imposed by Parker's vast influence.

Osborne is too shrewd to put this point of view in a European mouth, where it
could be dismissed as, well, sour grapes. It falls instead to the New York wine
importer Neal Rosenthal, whom Osborne calls ''the American wine world's
fiercest and most articulate iconoclast.'' Rosenthal is a powerful presence in
this book and has much to say about the difficult but essential balance between
technology and tradition, the necessary ''biodiversity'' of wines, all of it in
revolt against the forces that, justly or not, Parker has come to represent.

''The Accidental Connoisseur'' is a vital book for those who care about wine;
who find hyperventilated discussions of microscopic differences between
hundreds of essentially identical wines to be little more than scholastic
quibbling about how many angels can dance on the top of a cork; who see the
quasi religion that raises wine to the status of a Holy Grail promising
ineffable pleasure to be in reality a mercenary and joyless cult, which stuffs
the mad delights of Dionysus into a neo-Puritan brown bag.

Osborne is a new voice in the wine world, smart, generous, perceptive, funny,
sensible, free of cant and arrogance and self-interest. It's about time.
''Great Wine Writing'' just got a good deal thicker. "


Dale

Dale Williams
Drop "damnspam" to reply

As it turns out, I just finished reading the book a few minutes ago. I was not
impressed. Seems like the author was trying to take the approach of Anthony
Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly and
apply it to wine. I found him occassionally interesting but often just
arrogant and a reverse snob. Once I've written the full review for the
California Grapevine I'll post a full review.
Bob Foster, Book Review Ed., Calif Grapevine

"Dale Williams" > wrote in message
...
> The following review by Tony Hendra of "The Accidental Connoisseur" by
Lawrence
> Osborne is in tomorrow's New York Times Book Review. Sounds like an
interesting
> book (though I'm surprised at the idea of Neal Rosenthal as ''the American
wine
> world's fiercest and most articulate iconoclast.''). Hope I'm not
violating any
> copyrights.
> Dale

I hope the book is as interesting as the review you posted! :^D

I liked that part about "angels dancing on the head of a cork".

Tom S