Personalities

Hugh Johnson: the writer about wine
"Vinnaya Karta" №11 (70) December 2005

Hugh Johnson is the most authoritative wine writer in the world.

He recently visited Moscow where he presented his books in the Russian language and held a masterclass on Louis Roederer champagne. Mr. Johnson gave a short interview especially for VK.

- Where do you get your inspiration when you write about wines?

- It depends upon which wine and under what circumstances. I mean very often it’s from the place and the people. And it’s the culture and the intension behind the wine — if it expresses something which relates to some aspect of history or geography, etc. Then there is something interesting to explain to my readers and it becomes a story.

- When you open a bottle of wine, what are your expectations?

- The general answer to that is I’m looking for balance as a sort of satisfaction that a really good wine — or any wine — can give you. It is ’Ah!’ feeling. It is very difficult not to use abstract words like harmony and balance because that is the way it turns out. A wine is always a meeting place of various forms of energy. You have sweetness, you have acidity, you have alcohol and you have tannins. If they arrive in a harmonious soul, you recognize it. I don’t think it takes practice in something which your mouth accepts gladly and it says ’Ah, good, that’s fine, I really like that". Then you can start analysing it. And if you analyse it with more knowledge, you can understand more in it. On the other hand, if you analyse it sometimes with too much knowledge, technical knowledge, then the picture falls apart. When you say there are so many grammes of acidity, so much new French oak, and so on, you deconstruct what should be a complete whole.

- So for you the primary aim in the wine is the beauty of nature.

- Yes, the beauty of nature and balance together. I mean some wines strike you as just being naturally beautiful. Clearly, that was god given because it seems to be nothing, no artifice about it at all, there’s no work gone into it. If you have beautiful Burgundy for example. And it’d help that if you just pick grapes at the right moment.

- What is more important in a great wine — its sense of place of winemaker’s interpretation?

- It’s clearly both. Then you come to the question what is great wine. Many people argue the great wine is a work of a master. A masterpiece painting is only going to be the work of genius and they like to elevate some kinds of wine to that level. I don’t accept that for a hundred percent. I think extremely good wines — call them great or not — can almost happen by chance. And then you get to the thrill of the natural beauty. And if you see a pretty girl, you don’t say that she would be better with an eyeliner on, do you?

- In the history of wine there have existed a lot of styles. Which of them do you think deserve better appreciation nowadays?

- There are several wines that are underrated now which historically had been great. The most obvious example for me is Tokaji. That is the wine which I first met many years ago, in about 1970. And I tasted great examples of what it had been and realized nothing I’d had was happening anymore. I thought, ’How frustrating, a potential of this is brilliant, and it is — or has been — one of the world’s great wines’. It could also apply to other wines. The Constantia from South Africa has been a very great wine. I once tasted Constantia of 1830, it was, no question, a great wine. Malaga also. The funny thing is all these are sweet wines. And this is another example which is sherry. Sherry today is terminally out of fashion, I mean it’s terrible how undervalued it is, it’s the biggest bargain in the world. I mean the finest sherry costs less than some Australian Chardonnay. Historically it’s quite unjust! But that’s fashion. Who can argue with fashion?