Jay McInerney
THOMAS SAMSON / AFP / GETTY IMAGES
In 1999 US House & Garden magazine approached New York literary hero Jay McInerney to write a wine column. It was an audacious move; McInerney, whose Bright Lights, Big City was one of the hit novels of the 1980s, had no professional connection with the wine industry, nor any formal training as a tasting critic. But he had a passion for wine and an eagerness to learn more, and his articles proved highly popular among readers.
House & Garden folded in 2007, and some time later McInerney was picked up by The Wall Street Journal, where he continues as its resident wine writer. “Is Jay McInerney the world’s best wine writer?’’ The Guardian asked
recently. After reading McInerney’s latest collection of wine essays, I would have to argue that he is certainly the most entertaining.
The Juice: Vinous Veritas is the third collection of McInerney’s columns. Each piece is about 1000 words and covers a raft of wine-related topics: from wine varieties and labels to vintners he meets, regions he visits, trends and marketplace newcomers. You learn a lot, but you are also inspired to taste the wines he talks about and travel to the areas he describes. If ever there was an affordable wine book to nourish the soul and inspire the palate, this is it.
In McInerney’s loving hands, wines develop personalities, like characters in a novel. “Whenever I think about comparing chablis with Cali chardonnay, I think of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s,’’ he writes. “Truman Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the part; she could have been great, but it would have been a very different movie. And chardonnay grown in chablis’ Serein River Valley as opposed to the Napa Valley comes out very different indeed. Young chablis is lean and racy, although with age the best chablis takes on a dazzling richness.’’
Re-assessing the worth of pinot grigio, McInerney recalls that “like many of my peers, I turned my back on pinot grigio early in the nineties and remained slightly embarrassed about my early enthusiasm, much as I did about my earlier reverence for the music of the Monkees. PG seemed like the vinous equivalent of the novels of Paulo Coelho.’’
And then there are his descriptions of the wineries and regions he visits – courtesy of various generous editorial budgets – which make you want to book a plane ticket and head for Burgundy’s Côte d’Or/the Napa Valley/the dining room at Cru in Greenwich Village.
McInerney also celebrates the people he meets during his wine journeys. His curiosity and powers of observation bring to life characters such as South African winemaker Anthony Hamilton Russell (“if Hamilton Russell’s wines are restrained and classical in demeanor, the same cannot necessarily be said for the dashing six-foot-four, 49-year-old proprietor’’) or Piedmont’s Giuseppe Rinaldi, who is “lying in the driveway of his Beaux Arts villa in Barolo, poking a wrench into the innards of his Yamaha dirt bike’’ when McInerney first comes across him.
The Juice’s dust jacket describes this collection as “a masterclass in a wide range of grapes and wine styles’’. It is a fitting assessment of a master wine writer at the top of his class.
The Juice: Vinous Veritas
by Jay McInerney
» $32.99 (Bloomsbury)
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