Lots of wine books, not very many good ones
As the author of two tomes on California wine, I know full well how short the lifespan is of a book. They come and go with the regularity of coastal fog, drifting in and out of existence. Some, because of the peculiarities of the media ritual of book reviewing, are more persistent than others. For example, anything Eric Asimov reviews and raves about can be counted to have a longer shelf life—say, a couple of months—than others. But 98 percent of wine books are destined, in my humble but experienced opinion, to evaporate quickly, finding their way into the remainders bin at the local bookstore within one month—if, that is, the local bookstore hasn’t yet gone out of business.
Why most wine books have such a short shelf life is not hard to discern: it’s because they’re ephemeral. They’re reflective of moments in time, or perhaps moments in the zeitgeist is more appropriate. But in grasping the immediate here-and-now they fail to grapple with larger, long-term issues, the ones that really matter to both history and to the people who must live through the unfolding process of history, which happens to be us all.
Actually, I’m luckier than many wine book writers, in that my two—A Wine Journey along the Russian River and New Classic Winemakers of California: Conversations with Steve Heimoff, continue to sell well, despite being ten and six years old, respectively. I’m nowhere in Jancis Robinson’s league, though, much less Karen MacNeil’s, whose “The Wine Bible” will survive the next nuclear holocaust and asteroid-Earth collision, combined. But my books sell tolerably well, which satisfies me.
It’s hard to write a book because it takes a ton of organization and research. But it can be done by anyone with enough time and skills of literacy. (Actually, a great many wine books, especially those little pocket guidebooks, aren’t written by the famous authors on the cover. They hire anonymous writers and pay them, say, 20 cents a word, or $2 a review, although the reader would have no way of knowing that.)
It is, though, even harder to write a good wine book, not only because it’s always harder to do something well than mediocrely, but because in order to write something penetrating and long-lasting you really must have your eye and mind firmly set on the long span of history, which means you must understand history and, most importantly, be objective enough to let history do its own thing, rather than seek to impose your own will and conditions upon it. Some books claim to have identified historical trends, but as the immortal baseball manager and existentialist philosopher, Casey Stengel, warned, “Never make predictions, especially about the future.” The psychologist and Nobel economics laureate Daniel Kahneman expanded on this: “Most successful pundits are selected for being opinionated, because it’s interesting, and the penalties for incorrect predictions are negligible. You can make predictions, and a year later people won’t remember them.”
We see this latter insight keenly illustrated when it comes to vintage prognostications. More wine writers have gotten them wrong, over the years, than they’ve gotten anything else wrong, or right for that matter; but no one has ever called a wine writer to account for a bogus vintage declaration, and probably no one ever will, for the simple reason that people have better and more useful things to do with their lives than busting an incorrect vintage assessment, twenty years after it was issued.
Here are some of the wine books that I’ve read over the past few years that I love and that are classics. Get them if you can:
- What Price Bordeaux? Benjamin Lewin, M.W.
- In Search of Pinor Noir: Benjamin Lewin, M.W.
- Postmodern Winemaking: Clark Smith
- Claret & Cabs: Benjamin Lewin, M.W.
- Secrets of the Sommeliers: Rajat Parr and Jordan Mackay
I wish I’d written them all, but I couldn’t have, any more than Benjamin or Jordan or Raj could have written “A Wine Journey along the Russian River.” A good wine book reflects the writer’s personality, judgment and insight. Remove any of those factors, and the book is not so good. By the way, I don’t know Benjamin Lewin, M.W., and I profit in no way by recommending his books so strongly. He’s just a damn great writer.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
- Finding Books on Wine | Varietal Voyages - […] Steve Heimoff published a blog post today regarding the dearth of good wine books and offers insights for why this…
Regarding this quote:
“The psychologist and Nobel economics laureate Daniel Kahneman expanded on this: ‘Most successful pundits are selected for being opinionated, because it’s interesting, and the penalties for incorrect predictions are negligible. You can make predictions, and a year later people won’t remember them.'”
Let me proffer this:
Excerpt from Fortune Magazine:
(February 6, 2006, Page 44)
“Ditch the ‘Experts’;
Grading pundits and prognosticators: More famous = less accurate.”
Link: http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/02/06/8367977/index.htm
By Geoffrey Colvin
“Value Driven” Columnist
The book is “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” by Philip E. Tetlock, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. It summarizes the results of a truly amazing research project: Over seven years Tetlock got a wide range of experts and nonexperts to answer carefully constructed questions about the likelihood of specific future events. He ended up with a staggering 82,361 forecasts, expressed in quantifiable form and thus able to be analyzed deeply. His definition of “political judgment” included plenty of topics that you and I would call economic, such as government spending and national economic performance.
Tetlock then cranked all those numbers through every kind of statistical thresher, flail, and grinder you can imagine, and THE RESULT WAS CLEAR: EXPERTS DON’T ACTUALLY EXIST. SPECIFICALLY, EXPERTS WERE NO BETTER THAN NONEXPERTS AT PREDICTING THE FUTURE. They weren’t even as good as computer programs that merely extrapolate the past. The best experts could not explain more than 20% of the variability in outcomes, but crude algorithms could explain 25% to 30%, and sophisticated algorithms could explain 47%. Consider what this means. On all sorts of questions you care about — Where will the Dow be in two years? Will the federal deficit balloon as baby-boomers retire? — your judgment is as good as the experts’. Not almost as good. Every bit as good.
Which is not to say that experts are no different from you and me. They’re very different. For example, they’re much more confident in their predictions than nonexperts are, though they obviously have no reason to be. . . .
Regarding this statement:
“. . . no one has ever called a wine writer to account for a bogus vintage declaration, and probably no one ever will, for the simple reason that people have better and more useful things to do with their lives than busting an incorrect vintage assessment, twenty years after it was issued.”
Robert Parker called British wine writers to account for their bogus 1982 vintage red Bordeaux declarations when the wines were first being sampled by the trade. (And he continued to call out the British press in subsequent years.)
I took Wine Spectator’s James Laube to task when he reviewed the 1986 vintage California Cabernets at 10 years of age.
In an unpublished letter to Wine Spectator’s Marvin Shanken, I tracked the scores of each newly-released 1986 Cabernet that Laube reviewed, tracked their parallel review in Laube’s seminal book “California’s Great Cabernets,” and tracked them again when he re-reviewed the vintage in a Wine Spectator “Special Report” titled “10 Years After” (December 15, 1996, pp. 64-70).
Citing excerpts from the opening and second paragraphs of the “Report”:
“A word to the wise regarding the 1986 California Cabernets: DRINK ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM. Now that they’re 10 YEARS OLD and FULLY MATURE, there are still enough outstanding Cabernets to consider this a great vintage. A few of stars . . . [only three examples cited, out of 81 total wines re-reviewed in the “Report” — Bob] . . . are truly magnificent wines that should easily age for another decade. The top three dozen wines of the vintage offer enough complexity, depth and concentration to merit attention, but MOST ARE READY TO BE DRUNK – AND SOON.”
Wines that Laube projected would last upwards of 20 years were “fully mature” at 10 years of age.
As someone who organizes wine cellars, I continually meet and speak with collectors who retain their memory of the wine’s original review upon release – including the projected multi-decade “drinking window” of the wine – and never test that projection by periodically sampling their case of wine.
The upshot being collectors who repeatedly kick themselves for not drinking their wines earlier versus later.
Projecting a wine’s longevity is just one person’s opinion . . .
Recall that quip: There are no great old wines, only great bottles.”
Check out Jancis Robinson, M.W.’s 1989 book projecting the arc of maturation of selective “benchmark” wines:
“Vintage Timecharts: The Pedigree and Performance of Fine Wines to the Year 2000”
Link: http://www.amazon.com/Vintage-Timecharts-Pedigree-Performance-Wines/dp/1555844405
And her general take on contemporary and recent vintages:
http://www.jancisrobinson.com/learn/vintages
Steve,
The late Canadian wine writer Andrew Sharp wrote a wonderful consumer guide titled “Winetaster’s Secrets.”
Link: http://www.amazon.com/Winetasters-Secrets-Andrew-Sharp/dp/1894020987
Backgrounder on author: http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20000411.OBSHAR/BDAStory/BDA/deaths
Quoting Robert Parker’s book review:
“An extremely well written book with the most informative and perceptive chapters on wine tasting I have read. This is the finest book for both beginners and serious wine collectors about the actual tasting process — lively, definitive and candid.”
Every time I open up my highly annotated and dog-eared copy, I learn (or recall) something valuable.
Highly, highly recommended.
~~ Bob
This Wednesday night I am pouring 1975 Mayacamas and Rodney Strong “Alexander’s Crown Vineyard” Cabernets at a dinner party for friends who have never tasted California wines going that far back in time.
While doing research on Mayacamas, I came across this website posting:
“The Evolution of a Wine Critic – James Laube and Mayacamas Vineyard”
Link: http://winecultureproject.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/the-evolution-of-a-wine-critic-james-laube-and-mayacamas-vineyards/
Underscores my expressed thoughts [above] about Wine Spectator’s oracular projections on how well individual bottles of wine will age.
More anon on how these 40 year old wines show.
(“Gifted” to me by a former ambassador to Ireland, who served 1970s and 1980s California Cabs — Heitz, Beaulieu, Mondavi, Mayacamas, Caymus — to the diplomats who dined at the embassy. He, in turn, brought back First Growths and Yquems and red Burgs like DRCs and Henri Jayers to populate his Los Angeles wine cellar.)