Product Description

Writing with Julia Child's authority, Elizabeth David's intelligence, and M.F.K. Fisher's verve, Jancis Robinson share her lifelong romance with wine and its attendant pleasures--gastronomic, scenic, cultural, and social.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2188423 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Library Journal
The editor and author of almost a dozen British books on wine, including The Oxford Companion to Wine (LJ 12/94), Robinson knows the wine world inside and out. Here she shares her love for and knowledge of wine via a collection of autobiographical anecdotes and sketches covering everything from the time spent early in her career writing for Wine and Spirit magazine to her adventures taping the Wine Course for the BBC. Dedicated wine enthusiasts and collectors will drink up Robinson's stories of meetings with the luminaries of the wine world and her visits to the vineyards of countries as varied as France and Australia. However, the average American reader might be overwhelmed by the emphasis on the British wine trade. Libraries with comprehensive wine book collections or public libraries catering to a gourmet clientele will want to consider.?John Charles, Scottsdale P.L., Ariz.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
In case you were interested, here's everything you could ever possibly want to know about Robinson's (Oxford Companion to Wine) career trajectory. Robinson, who has been a fixture in the wine writing establishment for 25 years, teeters precariously, wanting her readers to know that she is both a wine connoisseur--exquisitively sensitive to the historical, geographical, and sociological contexts of wine--and a populist rabble-rouser, bucking received opinion as she champions the wine-drinking pleasures open to Everyman. She quaffs Grands Echezeaux, La Tache, Romanee-Conti, 1847 Yquems, and 1787 Branne Moutons, has ``swashbuckling'' Harold Evans as her editor at London's Sunday Times, and hobnobs with Hugh Johnson and Edmund Penning-Rowsell, But she also starts up the Drinker's Digest, an opinionated and iconoclastic newsletter dedicated to the principle of the best wine for the best price. Readers will learn the holdings in her cellar, her peregrinations through the wine-trade publications, the many personalities she meets, the astonishing meals she enjoys, and will share her each and every momentous occasion (``I shall never forget my first formal wine tasting''; ``My most embarrassing trial by tasting took place. . . . ``, etc.). She gets serious now and then--discussing the pros and cons of blind tastings, detailing how Robert M. Parker Jr. has gained his mind-boggling sway over the wine world--but for the most part, this reads like a gossip column that can't turn a decent sentence (``The others are that there are anyway enough people who love Tertre, for it is probably the only Saint-Emilion other than the top-ranking Ausone and Cheval Blanc''). Despite its moments, this autobiography is clunky, desperately self-promoting, and, at best, premature. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

A Must For Fans of Jancis and of Wine!
I have been shocked to see Jancis Robinson's books and videos being slated by Americans. Maybe her European style and English stlye of writing aggrevates Americans. I found this book absolutely charming! (Then again, I am European!)It's not a guide to wine in itself but more a fascinating tale of Jancis' involvement with wine and it's producers. If you bear this in mind when you order it, you will not be disappointed. Her turn of phrase makes this the ideal book to read whilst sipping a nice glass of wine!

A Matter Of Perspective
If you want tasting notes and rankings, pick up Robert Parker or Hugh Johnson. This is a book about a life in wine, not a book about wine.

"Tasting Pleasure" is a ramble through Jancis Robinson's ascent into the heavens of the wine world. She's been very lucky, and has supported that luck with intelligence and hard work. In other hands, this story might have been insufferable; but Robinson's greatest gift may be her ability to keep a sense of perspective while progressing from one table laden with fine bottles to the next. She is well aware of the essential frivolity of what she does for a living, and also well aware of her good fortune.

N.B.: Unless you're totally fascinated with Jancis Robinson, there are sections that are easily skippable. The book remains, even so, a worthwhile addition to your wine library.

Is this a vintage read?
It is difficult to critique a book that one should not be reading. After slogging through the 334 pages of this "diary dump", I am convinced that I am not in Jancis' target market for this particular book. I am relatively new to wine, but am developing a significant interest in it. But, I must conclude that either her target market consists of Jancis fans who want to read every word-at times I thought literally-she has jotted in her daily notes or-like the great vintage wines she describes-one cannot possible appreciate this book until one has stored it for 15 or more years.

Why, then, give it 2 stars versus 1? On the plus side, she writes well and, obviously, has a deep knowledge of and appreciation for wine. Further, there are short passages that are riveting; e.g., her tasting of a "[Thomas] Jefferson's Mouton", vintage 1787. Moreover, one does absorb an appreciation of the time and effort she puts into her work, and one (cautiously) generalizes that appreciation of wine can be-literally-a life-consuming endeavor.

On the minus side, there are the words. Often I recalled the (perhaps) apocryphal tale of Mozart's reaction to being told there were too many notes in one of his compositions. Here I caught myself wondering how in the world she managed to document all the minutiae she wrote (e.g., film production difficulties due to her pregnancy, and her husband's restaurant opening tribulations). Other times I caught myself looking at my watch as if sitting in a theater watching a movie by someone directing their life story, a rather disagreeable task on the surface. Did this book have an editor?

In sum, avoid this book in favor of one of her other fine books. Unless, that is, you aspire to become a female authority on wines, who writes books, produces numerous video and television series, whose husband becomes a very successful restaurateur, and who leads an apparently satisfying life. Oh yes, she tastes and drinks a quite a lot of wine.