I want to share a few important texts with you. They’re by Andrew Jefford, my favorite wine writer. But they’re actually on tea.
Andrew’s latest column from his widely-read series at Decanter.com summarises the deep affinity between wine and tea. Andrews exhorts wine producers to explore the complex world of tea, saying that it could well help them in reaching the Holy Grail of today: inroads into the Chinese market. It’s an interesting point. Is the understanding of tea terroir so deeply rooted in the Chinese consumer as to help appreciate Gevrey-Chambertin and Wehlener Sonnenuhr? In the elite of taste, it might well be.
Andrew Jefford, the best tea palate amongst wine writers. © Bbc.co.uk.
This last tea article by Andrew Jefford is by no means a debut. Readers might remember my recent series of wine and tea articles (Part 1 – 2 – 3) where I urged wine writers to taste tea more regularly, an exercise that I find expands horizons and fine-tunes the palate. Jefford actually has a long tea experience, and you can read his exquisitely written report from Taiwan, another short tea and wine parallel, a rightly militant take on teabags, and most importantly, this very comprehensive article that is in tune with most of my own conclusions on why wine and tea are sisters. I just hope other wine writers take example from Andrew and brew some good Dancong in between their daily glasses of DRC.
Very helpful to have all of Andrew’s writings on tea in one accessible place – thanks!
My favourite wine writer. No, wait. My favourite writer.
@Buonsangue: Thank you for this comment. I’m sure Andrew will be happy to read it.
Given what you mention about you, when will you write about wine and music? I am amazed by the number of music (particularly classical) fans that are also mad about wine. Thanks for pointing out the relationship between tea and wine. Always noticed though that tannin restraint is well respected when judging spring darjeeling (for example), and despised when judging particularly Burgundy (which is my favorite wine region).
Thanks for the comment vR.
I am reluctant to compare wine and music because I think they’re very different. Tea and wine are essentially the same – a plant-derived liquid drug – music, of course, is so much more. A bottle of wine is a relatively simple entity. Our interaction with a single wine, although it can be enthusing, is always somewhat limited in scope. I find it hard to imagine a wine will move me to tears, as music often does. A Mahler symphony or Wagner opera expresses an immense complexity of intellectual and emotional views and impulses and there is simply no way it can be compared to music.
Of course, if take wine on the whole as a cultural practice, the comparison becomes easier.
Regarding your comment on tannins, you have a good point, though in defense of wine tasting practices, I find wine tannins less dominating than those of black tea: there see to be less “tight” meaning a less abrasive, drying effect on the palate, plus they come packed in a much more intense flavour of fruit than tea, so somehow it is easier to taste more wines in a series. A hundred red burgundies per day is a reasonable amount for an experienced wine taster, whereas I think more than 30-40 teas can become a problem.
I agree, wine and music, no way!
Now, music finds its archetypal phenomena in the living of man and nature. In that sense the gestures of Vitis vinifera and Thea sinensis have in common with Przybyszewski and Chopin the Nietzschean “when you feel homesick for the land (…) and there is no longer any land.”
Yet, there is a land, as Wagner told us in Parsifal, and there is indeed a path “through the land” when one starts to consider Biodynamics. The Goethean “transformative exercise” will lead a musician to the cosmos of keys while the farmer will become a “cultural physician” of his land.
Granted, wine and music are very different. So are wine and architecture, wine and sculpture, or wine and painting. Yet, I feel there are all kinds of very illuminating analogies between all of these (and more). Personally, I find what is normally perceived as the established idiom of tasting notes almost entirely useless: it revolves around a set of relatively simple and direct associations and rather simple geometries that – to my mind – hardly ever rise to the occasion. I often feel that notions borrowed from other disciplines, such as “longitudinal vs central”, “elevation”, “syncopation” or “entasis”, are much more instrumental to the way I “see” wine than almost anything I have come across in the established jargon.
“Longitudinal vs central, elevation, entasis”: perceiving a form means that we are activating our sense of movement. So does mime and so is taste –while the digestion performs a true drama–. Highlighted by Goethe in his Italian Journey, there is indeed a polarity between art and nature. Its principles are, in agriculture, those applied by Biodynamics. But wine is no living produce. Through the alcoholic fermentation it has become a mummified product and as such, with music in mind, can only be compared to the frozen sound of a CD.