A Life Uncorked

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys wine. Hugh Johnson is an excellent writer. He takes you on a tour of the world's wine regions through his past experiences and tastings. Not an in depth look at each region but if you have ever visited any of them you will recognize where he is from his descriptions and feel right at home. A relaxed writing style with some of his British humor mixed in. Hard to put it down once you start reading it.

Great book, too bad it seems to be out of print in the US -- this brings up the price and availability. I thought the book was going to be a biography. Instead it reads more like a series of non-chronological wine stories organized by wine type: Bubbly, White, Red, Sweet. If you're into wine then this is a pleasure to read.

We lived in Europe for over 33 years, and I have used Hugh Johnson for 25 of those years, and since we moved back to the US.

Intriguing, well written, fascinating in its overview of a richly traveled life traversing a world of treasures, human and natural. Be inspired to explore as Johnson has done.

An absolutely delightful read, for someone, who loves wine, and appreciates the English humor of mr. Johnson. Highly recommended.

A Life Uncorcked is a celebration of the vine. It is a fun read and very informative. I especially love his take on the current wine rating systems, finally someone with sense!

As the title suggests, this tome is as much a combination of anecdotes as it is a tour around some of the world's greatest wine appellations. Drawing on his decades of wine writing experience, author Hugh Johnson manages to bring the reader into his world. Imagine your sexagenarian uncle reclining into his armchair with a glass of red wine: he sniffs; he drinks and satisfyingly says "ahh", then starts telling you all the experiences in his life that led him to the point of enjoying this wine right now, and what you should know about it if you are to be included in his will.The book's almost 400 pages are ordered like a tasting: bubbly, white, red, sweet. Johnson sets the stage with a question about wine, then answers it: "What does the reasonable, perfectly balanced person need to know? That wine is not one thing, but many. To appreciate it you don't have to swallow an encyclopedia, but you do have to pay attention. A good memory helps, but a clear focus on what you are drinking is indispensable". Then he follows up with another (unanswered) question: "If it turns a drink into a recreation, who can complain?" Indeed, he poses a lot of questions throughout the book in an effort to draw the reader in and make him think. Why drink inter-state? Why does this drink have bubbles? Are Burgundians all neurotics? Would Chablis be asked for everywhere if it were called Pernand-Vergelesses?The structure of the book bequeaths on each chapter its own world tour. Bubbly (he co-names the chapter "the social drug") obviously begins in the Champagne district in northern France before moving into California. He begins the White chapter in Australia, blitzes through a tasting date in Japan and plunges into the German Rheingau. That said, there is a heavy focus on France which is not surprising given he's an Englishman born at the time when the only decent wine available was more than likely French. Chablis, Bordeaux, the Loire and Burgundy all have their embellished chapters, while Italy, Spain and the New World come up in secondary chapters under subheadings or chapter titles like "the Bordeaux persuasion".He has a soft spot for Australia. This, I imagine, is one of few wine memoirs that donates more pages to Australia than to Spain and Italy combined! Having lunch in Margaret River, he opines that it could be the Medoc and Graves of Australia. But there are still "infinite possibilities" for experimentation in both location and wine making style. On Aussie Chardonnay, which he notes was not even grown in the country until the 1960s, he claims to find no pattern across the regions other than "succulence in restraint, fruit that is sweet but not sugary, acidity that starts your saliva, and a touch of smoke to make you sniff again". Though he does decry the direction of bulk wines, remarking that Australia has become "caught up in the conflict between conglomerates for supermarket space" and prophets "who see the future as applying taste to terroir as the French have done".I found the most enjoyable section to be his experience with his own hobby vineyard in France, which is the prism through which he explains the wine making process. The setting is old stone barn in Bourbonnais. The aim: plant and harvest 750 Chardonnay and 1,000 Sauvignon Gris vines across 175 acres. The enemy? The weather plus a small herd of destructive rabbits. After the picking, crushing and pressing, it comes time to add the sulfur in order stop oxidation. Johnson buys the sulfur "in a plastic jerry-can in a concentration that demands head-spinning calculations to achieve the recommended dose. No one is watching: I use a modest splash". It is anecdotes like these that breathe a little humor into wine writing, poking fun the science at the same time as recognizing the painstaking effort that it takes to achieve mastery.By the time one reaches the end of the book, it seems there is practically nothing Hugh Johnson hasn't done. He has almost capsized in an unseaworthy vessel trying to do a "claret run" through the Bay of Biscay; created a haiku content for fifty Japanese geishas trying to learn wine; sat on the board of Chateau Latour only to be "fired for non-attendance"...the list goes on. Perhaps that is the vaunted life of the international wine aficionado. At the same time, avid descriptions of the settings in which he has experienced wine do the trick of bringing each bottle to life. When each individual and each wine meet, it is that context which makes interesting reading. "You can, of course, like a college examiner, submit every sample to the same critical appraisal and accept or reject it", he writes - a jab at Robert Parker. "Or you can embrace the identity, enjoy the circumstances, be transported to other times".It is interesting to note how much Japan figured into his wine ventures - in the late 20th century the country's rich elites seemed to be yearning for a greater understanding of wine, whether to look good or make the right investments as much as it was for enjoyment probably. There are parallels to China today, whose colossal focus on Bordeaux (it beats the UK and Germany as the leading export market by value for Bordeaux wines) has become a welcome financial beacon for the elite French chateaux. I guess it will be for the current generation's global wine expert, who today probably visits Beijing and Shanghai more than annually, to write the China chapter as it unfolds. In the mean time, you can be satisfied with Hugh Johnson's memoir of experiences that traverses some major wine trends of the second half of the twentieth century. For other reviews, see my blog: [...]

Hugh Johnson is a grand figure in the world of wine: a respected international consultant, a writer, even a cultural critic. He wrote a book which pleasure to read and delight to look at. He adores his "claret" -- the English gentleman's name for red Bordeaux. Imagine pink-faced squires, enjoying their bottles of Bordeaux in a leisurely manner by the fire or under a shady tree. Incidentally, he and they are the sworn enemies of Robert Parker - a lawyer from Baltimore, cum the most influential wine critic in the world. There is an undeclared war between them: a real clash of styles and strategies. Here is why.An American Robert Parker grades every bottle according to a rigorous points system, the 100-point scoring system, based on the American High School marking system. "Wine", wrote Parker, "is not different from any other consumer product". So he will not only tell you if it's good, but exactly how good. If it's scores more, it's worth more. He and his followers use words such as rich, sweet, jammy, dense and thick, and blockbuster.Hugh Johnson, a Briton, advocates a different strategy: the intensity of flavors is not the most important criterion of quality. Nuance and balance are more important. Johnson emits self-depreciating humor and un-Parker-like self-doubt. He is not a critic who grades every bottle like a school examiner. Johnson prefers the word "commentator" to "critic." "A diligent dilettante is how I see myself," he writes; "a dabbler who dabbles deep, but not so deep that the waters of his subject close over his head." Not surprisingly, he argues that the numerical certitude Parker and his followers impose on wines can obscure the more complex pleasures of their character and place. "Great wines don't make statements, they pose questions".The book is filled with beautiful photos, anecdotes, and funny vignettes. My favorite story is about Andre Tchelistcheff, an interesting guy who was born in pre-revolutionary Russia. He was in his teens when the Bolshevik Revolution destroyed the old Russia. He escaped with the White Armies. He fought the Bolsheviks in Crimea and was seriously wounded. In the early 1930s, like so many "White Russians" he found himself in Paris where he became an assistant director of the Institute of Agronomy. In the spring of 1938 he met Georges de Latour, the French-born founder of Napa Valley's Beaulieu Vineyards, who had come to France seeking a new winemaker. Tchelistcheff took the position, moved to California and became the America's most influential post-Prohibition winemaker. Tchelistcheff was called the "dean of American winemakers". Who would have thought! If you like to read about wine you must have this book. Enjoy reading it with a glass of chilled Pouilly-Fuissé!

Interesting...

Very entertaining autobiography if you are a HJ fan, but the emphasis on VERY old vintages is sometimes irritating. HJ refers to vintages from earlier centuries to the 1970s and 80s, but in 2018 all this information seems very dated. And not everyone likes ancient wines.

Easy and entertaining read, great insight into the wine expert and man. Wish I'd had chance to finish reading before my last wind exam!