‘Consuming With the Valkyries: Writings on Wine’ by Andrew Jefford
For years Andrew Jefford has actually been among the English language’s most thoughtful authors and stylists on white wine. He never opts for the cliché or recites old saws. Generally, he is initial and provocative, though not a provocateur.
“Drinking With the Valkyries: Writings on Wine” (Academie du Vin Library, $35) is a collection of his works that have actually been released in wine regulars over the last decade or so. Primarily short and quickly digestible, they can be taken in here and there, but it’s a lot more enjoyable to take a seat with them gradually to comprehend the full level of his curiosity and insights.
“The Japanese salvage beauty from nature’s ridicule,” he writes of koshu, a grape and red wine grown mainly in the Yamanashi region of Japan. He reviews the mystery of a Lebanese gewurztraminer from the distinguished Château Musar that at first smells like “bandages and green beans,” but over the course of 4 days evolves: “At last I like the odor of it, fresher than ever now, as if dusk has occurred to dawn, and bakers are baking, and spraying olive oil on their bread and squeezing lemons.”
Mr. Jefford, who is English, has been all over the world and now lives in France. When he’s not blogging about wine, Mr. Jefford is a poet, and he’s far more interested in the poetry of white wine– the carrying ideas and dreamlike reveries it causes– than in the technical information. Occasionally the language feels a bit forced, as if he’s chosen clearness deserves compromising for initial images. However he’s on target most of the time and is an enjoyment to check out.
‘A Sense of Place: A Journey Around Scotland’s Whisky’ by Dave Broom
“A local color” is an expression most commonly attributed to a wine that reveals the qualities and character of the area in which the grapes were grown and individuals and culture there that produced it. “A Local color: A Journey Around Scotland’s Whisky” by Dave Broom (Mitchell Beazley, $50), makes the case convincingly that it applies equally well to Scotland’s single malts.Mr.
Broom, who was born in Glasgow and has actually been blogging about spirits for decades, is the ideal author for this stunning, expressive book. He understands the whisky area thoroughly and the people well, and he has the senses of marvel, empathy and history to tie them completely, in addition to the ability to create the odor of the salt air, the noise of barley sparkling in the wind, the vibrations of hammers shaping copper into stills and the singe of the oak staves as a cooper bends them over fire.This is not
a guide to whisky or an atlas, though you may wish to refer to a couple of Mr. Broom’s other books, like “Whisky: The Manual” and “The World Atlas of Whisky,” for this book’s journey around Scotland. Mr. Broom ranges from the Orkney Islands in the far northeast to Islay in the southwest, visiting craftsmen, start-up distillers working in garages and megadistilleries. He sketches characters and environments and finds the connections, with whisky as the focal point and linchpin linking past and present.