Texture—technique The book’s title was chosen by the editors. It was not Andrew’s choice. The chapter and individual essay titles, however, are all his. They are worth more than a mention. They show his imagination, they reveal his piece-planning, they are oblique, deft, tantalizing. Take this one: “Call in the Plumbers.” What on earth can plumbing have to do with wine? It is a nice example of his creative, revealing use of a central metaphor. The subject is appellations. “Appellations have a problem,” he begins. “The problem is the same one you have with your car or your house: appellations need maintenance to work well. They’re not getting it.” And after briefly discussing their origins, history, and current fitness for purpose, which leaves much to be desired, he ends, “Without maintenance, nothing lasts for ever. Time to call in the plumbers.” Very neat. Almost every title is a similarly delicious headline tease, many chapter headings a composition in miniature. “Call in the Plumbers” is a nicely contrived, simple top-and-tail analogy. Much of Andrew’s writing, however, is rich with allusion, metaphor, and conceit woven right through a text. He is very attached to the notion of wines’ “allusions.” They are, indeed, absolutely central to the way in which he sees the world through wine. Prominent among those allusions are cultural references to the arts and artists—Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, Ted Hughes; Schubert, Richard Strauss, Wagner; André Tarkovsky, Caspar David Friedrich, Miró, to name a few who figure—in no way self-consciously, but as a genuine enrichment of the ideas and to the appeal of the writing itself.


“An Evening with the Lilac-Berried


Mutant” (Gewurztraminer) is a glorious case in point. The central conceit here is of shame, deviant (mutant?) behavior, carnality, indecency, excess… It is no surprise, then, that two of this particular embroidery’s golden threads are Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) and Oscar Wilde, his lover. Bosie, at the end of his poem “Two Loves” describes his own homosexuality as “the love that dare not speak its name.” Andrew then observes of his love of Gewurztraminer, “This is when those of us who love Gewurztraminer begin to empathise with Bosie. In right-thinking wine-drinking circles, there is something a little


shameful about admitting that you regularly spend an evening with this lilac-berried mutant, and even enjoy the experience.” And he concludes the paragraph with the contrasting “rectitude” of Riesling: “Riesling and rectitude are bedfellows (in wedlock, of course).” Warming to his conceit, he then brings on Richard Strauss (excess?) and Salome (carnality, deviance?): “Whereas Gewurztraminer is doubtful, languid, and fin-de-siècle, at best a Rosenkavalier, and at worst a Salome, with its head- slicing alcohol levels, its neglect of acidity, its copious flesh,” and so on. “Head- slicing” for alcohol seems a bit much even in Jefford’s extravagant word-world. But just a moment: We know that Strauss based his opera Salome on Wilde’s eponymous play, and we know what happens to heads in Salome. It all makes perfectly orderly Jeffordian sense. With more, if obliquely, to come. In further defense of Gewurztraminer, Andrew notes that “Perfume is always there to lift the wine, no matter how low it has sunk; that’s what helps it survey the stars from the gutter.” And of its sugar


levels, he observes that “it’s most compelling of all in the middle. That is where you feast with panthers.” It’s a bit like explaining a joke, I know, but if you recognize the gutter and stars image as coming from Wilde’s Lady Windemere’s Fan and the feasting with panthers as Wilde’s code for illicit sex in the seedier suburbs of London, then there is a little frisson of pleasure in that recognition, and you relish the core logic. If not—no matter, there is simply joy in the enriched text. Wilde-related allusions are threaded right through this little tapestry, more or less overtly, but deftly, naturally, and utterly without strain. Andrew frequently takes a central metaphor and runs with it, weaving its filaments through a narrative, bright braids surfacing, more or less discreetly, here and there across the piece. It is very much part of his texture, his technique. It is allusion-rich in information, it is hugely entertaining. Like a gifted concert pianist giving prominence to different musical strands, at different moments, in a multivoiced Bach composition. Comparably skillful and, also similarly,


THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023 | 57


Photography courtesy of Académie du Vin Library


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196  |  Page 197  |  Page 198  |  Page 199  |  Page 200  |  Page 201  |  Page 202  |  Page 203  |  Page 204  |  Page 205  |  Page 206  |  Page 207  |  Page 208  |  Page 209  |  Page 210  |  Page 211  |  Page 212  |  Page 213  |  Page 214  |  Page 215  |  Page 216  |  Page 217  |  Page 218  |  Page 219  |  Page 220