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To see the world in a glass of wine: A magnificent book by wine’s lyrical, enlightening polymath
Drinking with the Valkyries Andrew Jefford
Published by Académie du Vin Library 271 pages; hardback; $40 / £25 REVIEWED BY
MICHAEL SCHUSTER
eep that curb rein taut, or the keyed-up thoroughbred that is Andrew’s mind may bolt. For his is an irrepressible intellect, racing with ideas and images and the words with which to make them larger than life, trawling the polymath’s fathomless pool of learning. And if there weren’t the corraling discipline of a journal’s page, the horse would breach the starting gate and be on the horizon in the blink of an eye. But the majority of these 70 wonderful pieces, from 15 years of journalism, are just that, the magazine page, a useful 800-to- 1,200-word containment that Andrew has mastered beautifully. And in which this thoughtful, searchingly curious, cultured man takes us on a wild linguistic ride, in a prose so richly conceived and seductive that if the core message is very occasionally blurred by the medium, it matters not, so pleasure-packed is his universe of words—as exciting, as pleasing, as stimulating as the liquid that is its inspiration. Wild? Often, yes. But one of the great pleasures of Andrew’s writing, and of this volume, is the great variety of pace, dynamics, tempo, and tone between his pieces. A musician’s sensibility. Take a look at that diversity. Why, to
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start with, Drinking with the Valkyries? Andrew’s phrase, his editors’ choice for the book’s title. Catchy. Here is Andrew at full tilt, in his romper suit, advocating drinking Vintage Port early, in the essay from which the book’s title comes. It is allegro furioso. First, the winemaking:
56 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023
“The fruit is pummelled to annihilation as quickly as possible during a break-neck vinification period of extreme if carefully controlled violence (perhaps cage- fighting would be the best metaphor of all) […] Extreme force is necessary. Shock and awe: trembling grapes.” And then: “What I want to say is this: ignore anyone telling you not to taste and drink vintage port in the earliest youth. You should drink it, soon. Act precipitately. You won’t fully understand it unless you have tasted it young, in its ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ stage, when it comes hurtling out the glass and puts the screamers on you.” And the paragraph finishes, in an extension of the heroic galaxy-galloping metaphor, as a mini astral word cloud: “Quality is quietly there, like a store of hydrogen, feeding its solar force. Don’t wait until later, when it’s become a red giant or a white dwarf: open that stellar bottle now.” Exciting, impressive, or what? But of course his steed is not forever at the gallop; his pace can be more sober, lyrical, Andrew’s fingertips soft on the snaffle. Japan in April 2019: “The cherry trees were in flower. Their clouds of white, exploding like magician’s handkerchiefs, lit spotless Tokyo by day and night alike.” Then, of its Koshu grape, “a little lees contact fills its dimples with cream.” And at the other extreme of the tonal spectrum, Andrew on lockdown. Empathetic, profoundly human, pensive, elegiac. Adagio mesto, this—slowly, sadly, the directions for the slow movement of Brahms’ Horn Trio, contemplating his mother’s recent death: “The Great Lockdown fell on us like snow in the small hours. When we woke, the unconditional right of free movement had been snuffed out. A new quietness blanketed the land. Every city, I remember thinking, must now be Venice: a place of voices and footsteps. With the added frisson of disquiet. Every voice, every footstep needs justification. Every breath could kill.” You won’t read a more imaginative, moving account of this strange confinement.
Humor
Andrew has an endlessly likable, quiet sense of humor. I remember noticing it when he first came to stay at our London house. I was explaining the two bell buttons on our front doorframe, one at eye, the other at knee level, and before I could even begin to say the lower one was for setting the alarm, Andrew quipped: “Is the bottom one for the cat?” There is a smile a page, a laugh on many. Humor suffuses his text; it’s very much part of his humanity:
On old bottles: “As an elder, permit me to advise you that, as often as not, ‘mature’ really does mean ‘old’. And old isn’t what it was—when it was young.”
On the similarity between the nourishment of great poetry and fine wine: “Such nourishment isn’t quite identical […] since the ingestion of ethanol is involved, but there is a kinship: it is at the very least a disreputable cousin. Ethanol alone is not responsible. White Claw Hard Seltzer will not take you on a similar journey.”
On the appeal of the wine-trade as a career: “Should you […] be suffering from wine-trade envy, listen up. […] Here are all the reasons why a career in the prison service is preferable.” And on wine-region hospitality and enormous dinners: “Merchants are quickly Buntered.”
And, bittersweet, on his mother with Alzheimer’s, looked after by his father with cancer: “I was staying with them recently, and my dad opened what is apparently the ‘most reordered red’ from the Laithwaite’s list […] a flabby, semi- sweet soup of a wine […]. ‘Gosh, it’s good,’ my dad said. We smiled hugely, toasted each other, and knocked it back. Lucky us: still together, still with wine in our glasses.”
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