Three years ago Jancis Robinson was in Dublin to launch her Oxford Companion To Wine, a work of immense scholarly weight. Since then, we've watched her stylish, witty dissection of wine's most intriguing characters in Jancis Robinson's Wine Course on BBC2 - a series so compelling that a whole generation of fusty claret drinkers found themselves rushing out to buy a VCR. Next week she's here again, this time to celebrate the publication of Jancis Robinson: Confessions Of A Wine Lover - memoirs of 20 winefilled and awesomely productive years. Damn and blast it, it's another gem. It might have been otherwise. The story of the food-obsessed schoolgirl who veered from near-anorexia in the Twiggy era into a career of high-level drinking could have become little more than an inflated chronicle of memorable bottles - a sort of bibulous companion to Winners' Dinners. Except that Jancis Robinson's luminous intelligence and almost fierce common sense have enabled her to tell a much broader and more balanced tale, full of insight and self-deprecating humour. If it were a wine, you'd undoubtedly describe it as well structured but wonderfully approachable.
"My six-year-old daughter calls the book Confusions Of A Wine Lover and there may be an element of truth in that," says the woman who has been described as "the gourmet's answer to Meryl Streep", "the thinking person's gourmet" (and, by the same sharp six-year-old, "the thinking person's grommet"). I had expressed astonishment at how much she had packed into those 20 years - not just the endless tastings, the travel and a constant stream of books but three children, between whose arrival she became the only British wine journalist to pass the tough Master of Wine exams, swotted for at the kitchen table. She admitted to a degree of astonishment herself, but gallantly attributed the miracle to her husband. "It's all down to Nick. He's just such a good father." Previously the owner of L'Escargot in Soho, Nick Lander has for some years worked from home as restaurant correspondent of the Financial Times.
Serious winos will drool with voyeuristic pleasure (and sigh with envy) at Jancis Robinson's descriptions of great wines tasted, often in stellar vintages. From her early days as a junior writer on Wine & Spirit magazine, on through years of growing celebrity, she kept fascinating notes - all the more creditable when many of the tasting occasions were marathons of eating and drinking. (The record, I think, was a tasting at Chateau d'Yquem, organised by a German pop group promoter, involving 66 unspeakably precious wines and 12 courses over 13 hours, with breaks for aspirins.)
But the confessions of indulgence are interspersed with equally fascinating revelations of a different sort. Jancis Robinson's first experience of the thrill of good wine - a bottle of Chambolle Musigny Les Amoureuses 1959, bought by a high living boyfriend while she was a student of maths and philosophy at Oxford - is part of a more personal strand that gives the book soul as well as body. Interestingly, it was dropping out for a year in the Luberon that gave her the courage to follow her nose into wine and food - a supposedly frivolous career-plan in the early 1970s. Ten years later, she had tumbled into the superwoman trap - trying to fit a small baby into a hectic filming schedule, and generally succumbing to overload. "I still fill the diary a bit too full," she says. "I find it very hard to say no."
Woven in among the personal reminiscences and the bottled landmarks are entertaining descriptions of scores of the characters who give the world of wine so much colour and vigour. Dapper and exactingly precise Michael Broadbent; jolly, avuncular Hugh Johnson; the theatrical Baroness Philippine de Rothschild; Australia's bluntly combative (and Krugcrazy) Len Evans; California's Bob Mondavi, who ordered 11 bottles in a restaurant one night for Jancis, Nick and himself and swept aside her protests with four withering words - "Do you wanna learn?" They are all here with dozens more, portrayed with affectionate candour.
Jancis Robinson is also frank, in this book, about wider, serious issues. She is horrified by the rapidly rising prices of Bordeaux first-growths and Burgundy grands crus. "I have already come across too many bores who persist in confusing wine appreciation with financial appreciation," she says sternly. "I don't want to manage my cellar. I want to drink it." Another concern is that wines the world over are becoming more and more alike. "All those big reds! Who's going to appreciate the fine red wines of the Loire, or even Beaujolais, if this trend continues? But overall I feel very positive, because good wine is now being made all over the world, and the quality keeps going up." She makes a great many sensible points - about the difficulties of blind tasting, for instance; the hazards of scoring wines, Robert Parker fashion, and the dangers inherent in competitions. "There is ever more encouragement to make wines that stand out in a blind line-up, that titillate in the short term, rather than beguile over the long term (or at least over a meal)," she sighs. How true. But underpinning every word is a simple but fundamental belief - one that's too often lost sight of by over-solemn, over-analytical wine buffs. Wine is for enjoyment.
Jancis Robinson: Confessions Of A Wine Lover is published by Viking at £17.99. Hear Jancis Robinson talk and taste her choice of wines for an evening at home and for a special occasion, in Hodges Figgis, Dawson Street, next Friday 24th October at 7.30 p.m. Tickets £2 (redeemable against the book), available from the shop.
Jancis's Temptations
I asked Jancis Robinson to pick this week's recommendations. She says: "I think all these wines are superior but have made this choice a particularly personal one to coincide with the publication of my particularly personal book." White Fortant de France Grenache Blanc-Chardonnay 1996 (widely available, usually £4.99) . . . "because lesser-known grape varieties, such as voluptuous Grenache Blanc, deserve encouragement". Fresh and peachy. Chardonnay Vin de Pays d'Oc, James Herrick, 1996 (Wines Direct, £6.99) . . . "because he has been a recent Languedoc pioneer, of Australian efficiency and viticultural techniques". Quite a full-bodied style. Domaine Weinbach Riesling Cuvee Sainte Catherine 1994 (Terroirs, £17.90) . . . "because Riesling is so under-appreciated, and as a gesture of female solidarity with this wine's makers". Riesling at its best - dazzlingly elegant.
Red Chateau de Gourgazaud Minervois 1994 (Dunnes Stores, Duffys Terenure, Deveneys Dundrum, Kellys Phibsboro and other outlets, usually £5.49) . . . "because Roger Piquet, the owner, left a very successful career in Paris to pioneer fine Languedoc wine even before I started writing about wine." See Bottle of the Week.
Kourtaki Vin de Crete 1995 (Superquinn, many SuperValus, Whelans Wexford Street, Kellys Malahide Road, Lord Mayor's Swords, O'Keeffes Kilkenny, Pettitts, usually about £5.50) . . . "because they hardly make them like this any more - oozing Mediterranean sunshine and rustic memories". A peppery winter warmer.
Acacia Pinot Noir 1994 (Searsons, limited supply, £19) . . . "to celebrate the fact that California's cooler regions, such as Carneros, produce such immediately delicious ripostes to red Burgundy'. So much so that Searsons can't get enough of it.