With his three-piece suits, poodle hairdo and bizarrely bendy physique, Tom Gilbey looks like he was created in a secret laboratory beneath the streets of Turnham Green by the Wine Marketing Board. But I have it on good authority that he is a real person. Gilbey came to prominence last year as the self-styled ‘wine wanker’ who ran the London marathon, stopping every mile to taste a wine blind and guessing most of them right.
Now we have the inevitable book; and while Gilbey isn’t an elegant prose stylist in the manner of Oz Clarke, Thirsty: 100 Great Wines and Stories (Square Peg, £20) is an enormously entertaining read. It’s part memoir, part guide to wine. The author comes from wine royalty. Gilbeys was one of the first companies to sell wine by the bottle in the Victorian era, while his father was a big cheese at Independent Vintners and Distillers. But Gilbey minor started at the bottom, as a cellar hand at Thomas Valley Vineyards, before moving on to the sales side. There are some good stories about being at the sharp end of the business, including liberating a pile of claret from a City firm that had gone bust without paying their bills. Unlike most internet wine people, Gilbey has worked as a salesman. He knows his stuff and how to sell it.
Another Instagram personality has a book out, but, like Gilbey, Marc Bouffard is no fluffy influencer. He’s an assistant professor of neurology in Boston, a wine lover and an Anglophile – hence his online sobriquet, ‘Englishman’s Claret’. There’s something of a young, non-irritating Loyd Grossman about Bouffard, if you can imagine such a thing. His book, Saint-Julien: Vineyards, Cellars, People and Place (Académie du Vin, £65) is an eloquent hymn to the commune that produces such British favourites as Château Talbot and Léoville-Barton. Bouffard knows his subject intimately and brings out the personalities behind the wines, such as the late Anthony Barton and his daughter Lilian Barton-Sartorius. No claret lover should be without this book.
Bouffard calls Saint-Julien ‘the unsung hero of Bordeaux’, because it offers good value in the Médoc compared with its neighbours Pauillac and Margaux. Another region that’s a refuge for the impecunious connoisseur is Beaujolais. It’s a sign of how unseriously this region was taken that Natasha Hughes’s new book, The Wines of Beaujolais (Académie du Vin, £35), is the first proper guide to the region in the English language. With Burgundy prices going through the roof, wine lovers are flocking to the neighbouring region, so it’s a timely moment to produce such a thorough and readable guide. Try a Côte de Brouilly from Château Thivin if you want to know what all the fuss is about.
This review is proving a bit wine heavy, evidence of the strength of the Académie du Vin imprint, which was founded by the late Steven Spurrier in 2019. Of a recent crop of whisky books my favourite is the new edition of Dave Broom’s World Atlas of Whisky (Mitchell Beazley, £45). A lot has changed since the previous version, with France, England, Taiwan and many other countries now having solid whisky industries. Or not so solid. Since the book went to press a few producers that Broom included, such as Waterford in Ireland and Maison Lineti in France, have gone into receivership. Nevertheless, this is a thorough work of reference from the man who probably knows more about whisky globally than anyone else.
Another Round? A Post-War History of Britain in 12 Strong Drinks (August Books, £14.99) by Steven Parissien is such a good idea I’m kicking myself that I didn’t think of it. Each chapter is devoted to a drink which tells you a little something about 20th- and 21st-century life, politics and culture. The chapters on Babycham and Blue Nun are worth the cover price alone. Think of it as Dominic Sandbrook with alcohol. It has Dad’s Christmas present written all over it.
Another book that I wish I’d thought of is Corker: A Deeply Unserious Wine Book (Ebury £16.99) by Hannah Crosbie. The conceit is that rather than pair a bottle with food, like steak with malbec, she finds the wine to go with the occasion. So if you’ve just been dumped, she suggests drinking Barbaresco; or Moscato d’Asti when you’re hungover. Buy it for your niece, nephew or godchild who shows an interest in wine. With people like Crosbie and Gilbey on board, I’m sure the shadowy Wine Marketing Board can reverse the recent trend in abstinence.
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