‘The drink has called it into being’: a year in a wine column

Abstract

For a year, between 2009 and 2010, I wrote a wine-review column in a free regional newspaper as a passionate amateur. I conceive of the wine reviews as creative nonfiction and of myself as a role model for my students who have the option of writing on food. Genre has its courtiers and jesters and, in itself, it is bound for change as any other cultural phenomena. I think of my wine-writing practice as destablising that specific genre, attempting a transformation of it into an expanded field, via the efficacy of writing and wine as art. It is contentious to place winemaking in the realm of art. What I want to do is commend art, which includes creative writing and winemaking, for its efficacious capacity. This is also a contentious proposition. I think of my wine writing as public intellectual practice, linking wine as art to culture, politics and history, when, on the whole, wine columns stick solely to descriptions of the wine. Wine writing is about technical details, but it is also about what wine—its appearance (bottle label and wine colour), aroma and taste—sets the dreaming, remembering mind doing, and what links emerge to contemporary issues in the practice of the everyday.