I grew up on a farm in California, and the largest crop we grew was grapes. This was the San Joaquin Valley, in the centre of the state, fertile and hot. The grapes were primarily table grapes but if the crop was not up to the quality required, we took them to the winery.
Growing grapes was a livelihood, not a hobby, and I had to help. I drove a tractor. I tied vines. And I picked grapes-extremely unpleasant work in 90-100 degree heat, fighting off flies and bees. I remember my incredulity when, newly arrived at Oxford, I was excitedly told by one of my friends that he was off to Bordeaux to help with the harvest.
I liked going to the winery. When we reached the entry, a man came out and plunged a glass tube into the grapes. He was measuring the sugar level: this dictated the price we would receive. Then we drove into the winery itself, where the back of the truck was tilted and the grapes fell into the receptacle leading to the crusher, where the huge archimedes screw turned round and round as the grapes were mangled and carried off to the fermentation tanks.
There was wine at home, but I began my wine education at university. I went to Berkeley: intellectually powerful and politically radical. It was also close to the Napa Valley. A friend had a 750cc motorcycle, and we went on tasting weekends. I had no concept of spitting out then and by the time we had visited four wineries, I was ready to eat a picnic on the beach and crawl into my sleeping bag. I acquired a lot of knowledge about individual wineries during those years, knowledge which, alas, became less and less useful, as Californian wineries rose, fell and disappeared, to be replaced by other wineries which went through the same cycle. Beringer, for example, had been highly regarded but was slipping during my Berkeley years. Bought by Nestl?, who invested heavily in the property, it is now a reputable label again. Others were destroyed. The most poignant was Inglenook: founded in the 1870s, it had a reputation as a high-quality pioneer. But in 1964 it was bought by the conglomerate which became Heublein. They expanded and extended the Inglenook name to cover cheap wine made from grapes grown in the hot Central Valley and its reputation plunged.
At Oxford in the 1970s, I discovered a new world. Like France, where most people drink only French wine, in California it was then difficult to find any wine but Californian. In England, the choice was infinitely greater. I didn't realise how recent a phenomenon this was. Before the war, for most people wine meant sherry. But a by-product of fighting abroad was discovering the pleasures of a glass of wine. By the 1960s, Lutomer Laski Rizling had enticed millions of consumers to become regular wine drinkers. This came from Slovenia, but by the mid-1970s it was pushed out by Romanian wine. Then came Spanish, German and the cheaper French.
Another turning point was my appointment to the college wine committee. This was not because of the acuity of my palate; rather, I was probably the strongest member of the St Hugh's SCR and could bin the bottles. But with the manual labour had come the chance to attend tastings. I also took advantage of knowing which wines were too few in number to supply a dinner and were therefore available for purchase by the fellows, and a trickle of Chateau Beychevelle 1961 at ?1.25 a bottle came my way. Access to such a wine, at such a price, is now unimaginable.
The 1970s and 1980s were a good time for the penniless wine lover. Shippers and retailers merged, and excess stock came on the market. Augustus Barnett were selling Chateau Gruaud-Larose at ?3 a bottle (a case of the 2000 vintage sold en primeur for ?295). I thought hard before paying ?4 for a bottle of Chateau d'Issan. What is amazing, looking back, is not only that it was possible to pick these wines off a shelf at these prices, but that many of these were mature wines which had been aged before being sold.
A recent visit to my local Oddbins turned up almost no wines older than 1996. Cellaring is expensive, so consumers have to do it themselves if they want age. But most consumers now want fruit (for which age is not necessary) rather than the complexity of a bouquet of aromas and flavours for which age is usually required. If you want to drink older wine, you must buy your wines from a merchant who will provide storage, or you must create your own space at home. My husband Michael and I did both.
The wine society was a godsend for us. Founded in 1874 by some London gentlemen who wanted to eliminate middlemen and buy direct from the producer, it remains a co-operative. I was proposed for membership while a research fellow and gradually we used it more and more. The benefits are the chance to buy en primeur (before a wine is put on the market) and the storage space they provide. There are en primeur offers for wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Rhine, as well as vintage port. When wines are delivered to Britain, the Society keeps them in members' reserves for as long as desired. We have just been drinking some Corton Clos de Roi 1983, which I bought en primeur at ?15 a bottle. I cannot imagine what it would cost now.
Storing wine at home was a problem. We first used our lavatory and when we moved we enclosed the space under the stairs (where the previous owners had kept a tank of terrapins). There is space for only 300 bottles. This sounds a lot, until you work out how short a time it takes to drink it at, say, five bottles a week plus the multiple numbers used for dinner parties.
Over the years, our wine consumption has slowly increased. We had more money and we could experiment with unknown wines from unknown areas. At the same time, the wines we "laid down" became more expensive as we climbed up the quality ladder. But, then, with increased expenditure came a different sort of frustration: that of ignorance. Michael kept labels with comments, but we were eventually overwhelmed by huge, unruly binders. I hated looking at a wine list and not knowing what many of the wines were, or about their areas of origin. What could I expect of a wine from Gaillac? My knowledge of wine was as fragmented as my knowledge of music would be if it had been gained from reading hundreds of miscellaneous record jackets.
I ended up attending two wine-tasting courses given by Michael Schuster (author of Essential Winetasting), but they only increased my desire to know more. I realised that I could never do anything systematic on my own, work would push it out. Unless I just wanted to read about wine in books, I needed guidance. I wanted a coherent and organised body of knowledge to underpin my buying and drinking. There is a big difference between liking wine and appreciating it: I wanted to appreciate it. Appreciating, to me, means the ability to recognise the differences between wines. It means knowing why they are different, beyond the fact that they may be made from different varieties of grape. It means knowing why specific varieties are chosen, what contribution is made by the inter-relationship of the climate, weather, geology, soil and grape variety (the terroir), and what contribution is made by winemaking techniques. It means understanding the argument between those who believe that the foundation of a wine is the terroir and those who believe the technique of the winemaker is paramount. Is great wine made in the vineyard or in the winery? I wanted to know how to distinguish between a wine that is acceptable, good or great. I wanted the sensual pleasure I took from wine to be backed up by knowledge.
The answer came at a book launch party. One of the guests was the administrator of the Institute of Masters of Wine, and she told me about the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET), the wine trade's educational arm. There is a hierarchy of courses and qualifications that the amateur du vin as well as members of the trade could take, the latter usually sponsored by their employers. I looked at the certificate and the higher certificate courses. A friend advised me to take the higher certificate, as the certificate was so basic that it more or less began by explaining the difference between wine and whisky. I signed up.
I found the course challenging and fascinating. We had lectures for two hours on two nights a week, combined with tutored tastings from the region being discussed. At the end of the six months, we sat an exam. I had little time to revise, although I had kept up with the reading and attended all the lectures. A week before the exam, I locked myself away and worked. I went into the exam fearful that I would not pass, since the amount of material we had to learn seemed so huge. I came out knowing that I had not done brilliantly but more hopeful of passing. Three months later I found out that I had done so. I decided to try the next stage-the diploma.
The diploma is a grown-up qualification: after it there is only the master of wine, held by about 250 people worldwide. The diploma takes two years to complete and as before combines lectures with tastings. The depth of knowledge required to complete it is vastly greater than for the higher certificate. It begins with growing the grapes, making the wine, maturing and bottling it. Because it is primarily a trade qualification, it covers the market for wine buying, shipping, storing and selling. And it covers wine regions as well as the major grape varieties.
More of the farm girl remained in me than I had thought-I loved the stuff about growing the grapes: how to situate a vineyard to achieve the required effects from landscape and climate; how to look for and treat diseases; how to manage the canopy (the techniques used to expose the leaves and grapes to the sun); how and when to pick. The pleasure of soils: why gravel is good and clay is bad; the pros and cons of chalk; why the Australians fight over Coonawarra, with its terra rossa. I had never studied geology and I felt the lack. I had never thought about the difference between climate and weather. The former is eternal, the latter is changeable. In many areas-Sauternes, Burgenland in Austria-the conditions for noble rot (vital for sweet wines) are always there, but the weather determines whether it will happen. Why do vintage years matter more in some regions than in others? I wallowed happily in this.
My high school chemistry emerged out of the depths as I learned about the necessity of sulphur dioxide: without it, you may get an undrinkable liquid at the end of the process. Michael had read chemistry at Oxford, and we had dinner conversations about sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide and other elements in wine-making. My daughter Miranda, about to sit her GCSE chemistry exam, found it very sad. I found bottling less interesting, but at least I can talk about sterile cold bottling and the relative merits of real corks, plastic corks and screwtops (the best).
Wine Standards Board regulations were a chore, but the marketing part was interesting. Two arresting facts: 90 per cent of the wine drunk in Britain costs ?5 or less, 5 per cent costs ?5-6, and 5 per cent costs over ?6; and Australian wine now matches French in quantity sold. I do not drink much Australian wine: heavy-handed oak maturation, whether by oak barrels, chips in bags, or even (illegal) oak essence, appears to be all-conquering, and I prefer not to be hit on the head with a plank. But this use of oak probably contributes to the wines' popularity, since it can produce a slight sweetness. Many of my classmates, particularly those in the trade, were so knowledgeable about Australian wine-reflecting its position in the marketplace-that I felt intimidated and prayed that there would not be a question on Australia in the exam (there was).
There is a nagging worry in the wine world about Australia. Its "flying winemakers" are responsible for many recent improvements in hygiene and technology but fruit-driven as they are, they are also one of the main factors leading to an international style of wine, based on international grapes (such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay), which threatens to eliminate the individual characteristics of a wine arising from the terroir. This may be what consumers want, but the extinction of wines is a sad thing.
I loved studying the French regions. Bordeaux and the southwest-I now know about Gaillac. I know how and why Pauillac differs from Pomerol, what the Cabernet Franc grape contributes to claret, and why Sauternes needs both Sauvignon Blanc and S?millon grapes. The Languedoc fascinated me: how did a region of high quantity and low quality evolve into a region of lower quantity and higher quality?
We also covered the Loire. I enjoyed filling in the map with annotations about the different soils in the different regions (NASTY-Nantais, Anjou-Saumur, Touraine and the Central Vineyards); Germany, a favourite of mine, but unfashionable now; central Europe, which covered Austria to Romania; northern Italy; Portugal's light wines; Australia (oh God!); and fortified wines, in particular those of Spain and Portugal, although we picked up Madeira and vins doux naturels along the way.
Then came the exam. The WSET scheduled it at a time when I was overwhelmed with marking university papers. What could I do? The need to mug up on the effects of Lake Balaton on Hungarian wine was not an acceptable excuse for a late submission of marks and so the week before the exam I revised late into the night. We knew that there was going to be a map question. This entailed being given two blank maps along with lists of three wines for each map, and we would have to mark the spots where they were made, write tasting notes, and discuss the factors involved in their production. The expectation was that there would be a map of Germany on the grounds that there had not been one for the last two years. But what would be the other? I decided it would be northern Italy or the south of France. (One friend said that if the south of France came up he would tear up the paper.) The south of France came up.
We met at Ealing Town Hall at 9am, and a half-hour later the exam began. Except for the tasting paper, they were all essay questions. The first section was on wine production. Next came the tasting paper. There were six wines: we were told only that the first three were from Valpolicella; we were told nothing about the other three. We had to write tasting notes: appearance, on the nose, on the palate, its state of development, its quality, its "price point," its value for money, the grape variety, the country and region where it was made, and a reasoned conclusion. As in maths proofs, the analysis was as important as recognising the wine. The bitter finish of the second Valpolicella told me that it was an Amarone; I could recognise the Australian Chardonnay, but not that it included Colombard and Semillon grapes; and I recognised Dry Amontillado immediately. But I was defeated by the Sancerre, as I failed to detect an aroma of gooseberries, grass or elderflowers and put it in a lesser German region. We had been advised to abstain from alcohol before the exam, so our palates would be at their sharpest, but it did me little good.
I fled at lunchtime, taking my revision maps to a corner, unwilling to talk to anyone. At 2pm the final three hours began. First was the map question. Then I answered the questions, why is blending central to the production of, and trade in, Bordeaux wines? How do you account for the diversity of Portuguese light wines? But by the final question, on fortified wines, I was flagging. At 5pm, I packed up my tasting glasses and fled. It took me a week to recover. Then a friend took me to lunch at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, and I recognised every region on the wine list, as well as the names of many of the wines. I remembered why I had gone through it.
When the results arrived in August, I went to the living room, closed the door, and opened the brown envelope. I looked at the map questions and the tasting paper: I had passed both. I looked at the wine regions: I had done well, and even got an A on the Bordeaux question. Then things became darker. As I expected, I had not done well on fortified wines. Then came the blow: I, the daughter of a grape grower, had failed the wine production paper. If I wanted the diploma, I would have to re-sit that part.
The first year of the diploma ran from January to June; this year, I have had only from March to June. During this period we covered the rest of France-Alsace, Burgundy, Champagne and the Rhine. We moved on to southern Italy, Spain and South Africa, and then west to North and South America. We had to tackle eight of the classic grape varieties, classic because they have distinct characteristics, can make outstanding wines with the potential for ageing, and are widely distributed around the world. We looked at Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Merlot, Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and various Muscats: where they are grown and why, but in particular at the different styles of wine each can make.
Now the exam is looming. I have had to revise all of this, as well as the paper which I have to re-sit. This means one and a half days of exams, with three tasting papers, a map paper and four theory papers. My main emotion is resigned despair, with occasional stabs of bloody-minded determination. I am beginning to think that anyone embarking on the diploma should either be retired or working in the wine trade. But I would do it again, knowing what I do now. It has not destroyed my pleasure in wine but enhanced it and that, after all, is why I began this marathon.
