#208 "I think this wine tastes wonderful, but I've never tried it"

Matt Skinner, Jamie Oliver’s head of wine, is coming under a little bit of flak for recommending wines in his book, The Juice 2010, which he hasn’t actually tried.  The book’s deadline was before certain wines from the new world had been released, and there are other critics saying that what Skinner has done is wrong.

Skinner’s defence is that there are some wines that are consistent from year to year, but he has shot himself in the foot as in his GQ column he wrote 'It's important to remember that every year is different and that no two years – even in the same spot – will ever be the same. That's the beauty of Mother Nature.'

His publisher, Mitchell Beazley, said that the first edition of the book had negative feedback due to the fact that the book, in 2006, was effectively out of date as a lot of the wines in the book had long gone from the shelves. 

In defence of Skinner, every wine merchant has done what he has done.  No retailer tastes every single vintage of every wine they stock, and they do rely on earlier vintages when recommending wines to customers.  I tend to admit when I’ve not tried a current vintage, but that it is likely to be pretty close to the one I did try, but I’m not whiter than white and I know I’ve ignored vintage differences.  It isn’t as if I’m trying to pass off a Australian Shiraz as an alternative for Beaujolais, but I am using an educated guess to assist the customer.  This is what Skinner is doing in his book, and lets face it, and I don’t mean this in any negative way at all, but the people who are buying this book are not really going to be able to tell if there are any differences between Jacob’s Creek Riesling 2009 and 2008.

The fact that Skinner has tried to cover up the fact he’s not tried the wines is the problem.  If you are putting something into print, you know you are going to have to submit your text months before it is going to be on the shelves, so in knowing this, it would have been wise to ‘fess up and say “as everyone knows, these wines taste exactly the same, year in, year out and so, barring an act of God, you can assume that the 2009 wine will taste the same as the 2008.”

One thing though Matt, in the unlikely event you are reading this, if you are going to admit to not tasting the wines in your book, and use the “it tastes the same every year argument”, don’t write a column that goes against this view!