Book Review: The Accidental Connoisseur

Review

The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World, by Lawrence Osborne. (North Point Press, 262 pages, 2004). $36.00.

What is taste? Is it the physical sensation of something passing over the tongue? Or is it the character trait of aesthetic discernment, as in having “good taste”? The truth is that when it comes to wine, taste means both of these things, causing us no end of insecurity.

The Accidental Connoisseur begins with Lawrence Osborne undertaking a somewhat tentative journey to discover what “taste” actually is. Tentative because it soon becomes clear that the author is uncomfortable with, even contemptuous of attempts to describe the taste of wine. Over and over, he struggles to say something that will be acceptable to his hosts. He almost winks at us when conveying their responses. Empty platitudes, he seems to be saying. Very early in the book he confesses, “I do not trust my own taste.” It’s understandable then that he would be suspicious of anyone who claims otherwise. Unfortunately, this makes for a sometimes uncomfortable journey.

In places, Osborne’s tone just drips with condescension. Of course, as an Englishman, he seems filled with a certain Old World cynicism, not necessarily a bad trait when approaching an industry as huge and commercial as today’s wine industry. And he’s clearly trying to tread carefully among all the pitfalls involved in reporting on a product that many people still consider a luxury. He’s uncomfortable among the fabulously wealthy, but also among the customers of the “wine malls” of Napa, for both of whom wine seems to be simply an indicator of status (taste?). Osborne clearly delights in describing both his discomfort and his disdain. A common thread is his lampooning of the way wine is marketed and the way in which corporations are creating a wine monoculture, not just in North America, but worldwide.

In one unforgettable passage, he’s visiting a Napa winery and tasting wine with the winemaker and the PR director (a telling combination):

“[M]y drinking companions were conducting a chorus of self-praise which I felt sure they had sung before.

‘Real nice tropical influence—’
‘Mangoes, yeah, pineapples—’
‘It’s a Southeast Asian fruit market!’ Goldstein finally cried.
‘Seduction? Oh yeah!’
I too felt myself getting carried away.
‘A Bangkok paddy field!’ I whooped.”

Like the best kind of satire, this made me laugh and then feel miserable. The fact that the story is true made me feel even worse.

Osborne also visits with a Napa wine consultant who advises several wineries how to adjust their wine to obtain higher scores from critics like Robert Parker and the Wine Spectator. He uses a giant computer database and software that can suggest changes to the winemaking process at the touch of a button. That this soulless technician then claims to be on the side of the “traditionalists” is the ultimate irony. This man makes his living because winemakers are slaves to “quality metrics”. It seems that they too cannot trust their own tastes. At least where business is concerned.

Osborne does find some hope among the “garagistes” for whom winemaking is still an art and not a business. Among these eccentrics, he relaxes and can simply enjoy wine as a pleasurable experience. He refers in this section to Kermit Lynch, whose landmark book Adventures on the Wine Route was reviewed in our June 2004 newsletter. This made me smile:

“I remember reading Kermit Lynch’s Adventures on the Wine Route for the first time and laughing at the photograph in which a young and raffish American importer is standing in a cellar with the Rhône vignerons Robert Trollat and Gérard Chaves. They look like a gathering of anarchist bomb makers loitering in a sooty cave. And Lynch’s delicious book is delicious precisely because of its atmosphere of Cold Comfort Farm, with absurdity, squalor, and sublimity harmlessly mixed into Dionysian alchemy.”

Osborne has written a thought-provoking book, one that is by turns maddening and charming. Not unlike the world of wine, I suppose.