Why This ’80s Book Is Still the Best Thing Written About Wine

Sometimes people ask me which books I would recommend to someone who wants to learn more about wine. The answer is – there are so many. Today is probably the best time in history to be a reader interested in learning more about wine and the culture that surrounds it.

Global collaboration and funded research have produced encyclopedic reference works on the history and science of wine, there are reprints and early translations of classic texts, and new perspectives on very new, even very old corners and almost forgotten, from the world of wine. Many of these books are themselves beautiful design objects to behold.

However, for me, Kermit Lynch’s Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyers Tour of France is always at the top of the list. Because it’s a great read, yes. But, as I’ve come to realize over the years, it also sums up the things that make wine not just another commodity.

It’s a book that shows us that the value of wine will always be higher than what its price can measure on a market, or the opinion of a critic, or the analysis of a technician. The happy stuff that made me fall for wine in the first place, which no reference book, no matter how comprehensive, seems to capture.

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Lynch is an importer of French and Italian wine in America. His influence on what wine-loving wine drinkers around the world drink extends far beyond his base in Berkeley, California. Once you know his range – much of which comes from producers he’s worked with for decades, or started buying from before anyone, even his own compatriots, had heard of it – you see it. repeated in the catalogs of wine merchants around the world, including a couple here in New Zealand. You can even stroll through great wine shops and bars in Paris and see Lynch’s influence.

Lynch has great taste. What guides him? Not a palate for hit wines, nor an ability to provide sterile, detached insight into how a wine ranks in an anonymous metric or algorithm. He is passionately opposed to blind tasting and points. Instead, Lynch’s selections are driven by an instinct for adventure, great characters, and authenticity.

It is these same instincts that make his Adventures on the Wine Route such an exciting read. The book is full of personalities: his own, those of the winegrowers he falls in love with, and those of the places he discovers.

First published in 1988, it traces Lynch’s early years of visiting French wine regions. Many of the producers and regions that appear are world famous today, but in the 70s, when Lynch made his first encounters, they were undiscovered. Several were even considered antiques, from a time when Lynch feared they would be forgotten and replaced by more efficient and profitable alternatives.

There’s a real sense of risk-taking in the wines and people he’s invested his passions and livelihood in – he describes himself as fearful of running a cultural preservation society rather than a business. There are stories of a drunk trader serving tasteless wine and forcing Lynch to accompany him to dinner at gunpoint.

Jonathan Brookes brings you five stellar wines to take you through the chapters...

Provided

Jonathan Brookes brings you five stellar wines to take you through the chapters…

His undying love for the wines of Domaine Tempier in Bandol, Provence, is expressed through stories of great family dinners, matriarch Lulu Peyroux taking him to visit the best seaside spots in Marseille for mafia connections and dates. you adulterers, and the appropriate amounts of garlic (lots) in a good aioli.

There’s a “tasting” in an Alsatian cellar that leads to an eight-bottle dinner, where the host serves no food, leading to a belly full of Alsace’s finest vintages and a long stumble home. There are the victories, like finally being able to buy the exceptional wines of Chablis producer François Raveneau, who refused to accept that his wines could travel well, after years of trying and the help of several remarkable friends.

And the stockings of shitty hotel rooms, the food poisoning from the bad andouillette, the deathly cold cellars, getting bitten on the behind by the pet of a winemaker whose wines also turned out to be a pack of dogs. , and the loss of authentic wines and winemakers to new generations seduced by technology, efficiency and ego.

You could treat the adventures like a shopping list of producers and wines to try, and you’d be drinking pretty darn good (although the prices aren’t quite as friendly as they were in 1988). You better still check out his website, watch who he matters now and wait for these wines to appear in the New Zealand market, which they surely will, Lynch still has influence on smart wine merchants everywhere. And rightly so. Nearly 50 years after its first forays into France, Lynch’s selections remain true to their ethos of authentic people, places and living wines. I was lucky enough to find myself in the company of some of the Lynch employees on the ground in France, and they shared that same sense of fun and joie de vivre, the best parts of wine.

But a shopping list of names, no matter how great they are now recognized, is really not what Adventures is about. It’s part adventure, part travelogue, definitely a love story, and a manifesto for living well that sorts out the good (authentic people and wine) from the bad (filtration and Robert Parker). Sometimes it’s tragic, but most of the time these tragedies turn out to be quite funny.

Adventures captures the character and characters of a great wine, and it reminds me why I keep falling in love with wine. And always makes me think about what I drink next and with whom. It reminds me to drink better wine, something I never get from any reference book or encyclopedia.

WHAT TO TRY

Here is a selection of some of the classic Kermit Lynch finds available in Aotearoa, why not drink while you read! Most of them sell out pretty quickly, so contact their local importers if you’d like to try them out, they can let you know when new stock arrives, or even direct you to retailers or restaurants that might have some. bottles in stock. These are all wines worth seeking out.

Domaine de Montille, Burgundy Pinot Noir 2019

Hubert de Montille wines are where it all started for Lynch. Honest, delicious wines from a winemaker, in an area then awash with comically devious traders, ‘worried the 73s won’t sell in the US market? We can label them as 72 or 74, which do you prefer? Lynch’s French wasn’t up to scratch, and Montille’s English almost non-existent, so they drove to the tourist information center where they found someone to translate as they negotiated their first deal.

Tempier, Bandol Classic, 2019

If de Montille is where it all started, Tempier and its owners, the Peyraud family, are the stars of the Adventures of Bandol in Provence, these wines are deep and moving, full of life and energy, just as Lynch describes people who make them.

Lynch’s chapter on the Beaujolais region presents a touching story of his discovery of the wines of Jules Chauvet, the now almost mythical producer of wines that Lynch loves for their delicate beauty.

At the time of the wines’ first discovery Chauvet was an elderly bachelor, and most of the chapter is written with great sadness lest with Chauvet’s passing the great wines of Beaujolais will finally disappear to be replaced by overly alcoholic wines. and the chemically macerated wines then dominant in the region.

In a remarkable twist, the epilogue to a more recent edition tells the story of Lynch’s encounter with Marcel Lapierre, along with his three friends, Jean Foillard, Jean-Paul Thevenet and Guy Breton.

The group that Lynch would later dub the “Gang of Four” had become Chauvet’s sidekicks and their obscure methods (the origins of natural wine), were essential to the revival of their region. Three of the four wines are available in New Zealand, and although the alcohol levels are rising, they remain wines of fragrant elegance and great drinkability as Lynch discovered in the 1980s.

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