The cult of wine makers as rock stars is a trait for consumers to be wary of as its chief result is to put up the price of their products.
Winemakers are technicians, a bunch of journeymen, and some work harder on the detail – that’s all. The quality of the drink owes nothing to the showmnship now so prevalent.
Great wines really are made in the vineyard and each decade nature turns it on for a few of the ten vintages. We do not make better wines now than those of Penfolds from the 1950s and 1960s or the Bordeaux first growths of 1961 though globally the general quality is much higher.
The cult of the winemaker has grown over the last few decades perhaps because writers covering wine, struggling to make sense of it all, concentrate on the person, a style which works for other vocations.
My brother Richard recently drew my attention to an article in The New York Times which takes the style to a new and absurd height. ‘Maggie Harrison’s War on Wine’ by Alex Halberstadt describes how Maggie’s painstaking blends are dazzling diners and critics — and upending long-held notions about how winemaking is supposed to work.It definitely elevates Ms Harrison into the cult league.
Maggie tells us; ‘After her restaurant shifts, Harrison often spent her tips on wine, and she began to realize that it was her only genuine interest. Depressed and unsure about her direction, she had a clarifying psychedelic experience with the San Pedro cactus in Ecuador. One day at a bar on an island off the coast of Kenya, a man asked her what she did for a living. Harrison started to say that she was about to start a job in conflict resolution when tears welled up in her eyes, and she knew she would never move to Atlanta’.
Maggie is quite a gal and has all the moves. The name of the top wine, Antikythera, follows the direction of others to suggest scholarship with un-pronounceability. But that is not all as Maggie has synesthesia, allowing the transfer of numbers on sample bottles into colours and in this way to picture a wine blend as a map of colours like a painting. Clever girl.
This long article reveals that Maggie has thought out the steps to become a cult winemaker and to charge accordingly. Michael, Maggies husband must be pleased and surely is working on his conflict resolution skills.
Cult or con can merge so I scrolled down to reader comments for a survey and found 50 or so replies. They were not buying Maggies story and for a retailer that wishes to sell to the commonsense wine drinking I was delighted.
JA says: ‘Unbearably precious indeed, all of it. Drink it, feel tipsy, great. But stop pretending that this is as special as the work it requires and the money it takes. Most wines are three-buck Chuck plus a dash of mystique and marketing’.
I think JA would like the Glug style and suggest he begin with Stonevale Red Barn Barossa Valley Cabernet Merlot 2019 and Flocking Galloots South Australia Sauvignon Blanc 2022.
