Wine writer RICHARD CALVER enjoys the company of a fellow traveller and critic, but in a book.
I agree with the old Oscar Wilde quotation: “Work is the curse of the drinking classes”.
Amongst other things, semi-retirement means more time for reading, especially about food and wine; it’s immersion absent indulgence.
In late September, I received a media release about a three-volume work on the history of Australian wine called The Australian Ark: The Story of Australian Wine – 1788 to the Modern Era, by Andrew Caillard, Master of Wine.
The release said that this work had won the International Organisation of Vine and Wine Award in its encyclopedia category and the President’s Award.
After inquiring with the publicist, I was kindly sent a review copy of this magnum opus. But alas, other reading priorities have overtaken my reading of this three-volume set: I’m stuck in volume one.
Reading priorities are somewhat set by the public library system, which gives a particular time for reading books and which doesn’t allow you to renew where a book is reserved by someone else.
Very fair, but that sets the reading schedule when compared with books that are sitting there on my desk summoned by no one else. In time, I will write a review of the Australian Ark but, in the meantime, I want to talk about a book that was both lively and funny: Nights Out at Home by Jay Rayner, an English restaurant critic.
I had placed a request at the library for this 2024 book because his critiques of restaurants are world renowned and his humour honed.
I was hoping there would be a discussion of the wine that he would serve with the dishes he has adapted for home cooking from restaurants that he has visited for over 25 years as a food critic. But alas, the drinks he discusses are cocktails, particularly his favourite, the daiquiri.
In advancing his arguments for this cocktail, he is extraordinarily effusive: “It is sweet and sour. It is boozy and light. It is the beginning of my night. It is everything.” Hmmm, no and no, I thought.
Give me a classic Kir Royale to start any fine-dining occasion. This is a French champagne cocktail. It’s light, a little bit sweet and pretty. You just chill the glass, a champagne flute, add a glug of crème de cassis, a blackcurrant liqueur, and then top with your champagne (or high-quality Australian sparkling wine). If you’re being extra indulgent garnish with fresh raspberries.
There was a consonance between the critic and me though in the beginnings of our drinking history. He recalls his young days when as “a youth, sodden with bad taste, my drink of choice was vodka and lime: a cheap, blunt white spirit drowning in sugary lime cordial.” Snap, I thought.
As a young barman at the Sheraton Lounge in Auckland in 1970 (I lied about my age to get the job) my drink of choice was exactly the same, or sometimes I’d add orange juice to the vodka to be healthier.
There were other parts of this book that resonated. His view of being called a snob about food matched mine in the context of wine: “Not that I necessarily disapprove of snobbery. After all, isn’t one person’s snobbery just another person’s informed discernment?”
And in relation to the role of the critic, he is bang-on: “My job is not merely to reach a judgement, but to argue it in such a compelling, authoritative readable way that you believe me; that what I say makes sense.” I agree, even when I’m critiquing books!
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