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Hugh Johnson |
A whole world of wine in his pocket
With eight million copies sold and more than 6,000 wineries surveyed the Pocket Book of Wine is a vintage publication
THIS month sees the 30th anniversary of Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book (Mitchell & Beazley, £9.99), the world’s most widely printed wine guide.
In its brevity and comprehensiveness – Johnson uses the word ‘staccato’ to describe its prose style – it is unlikely to be matched, let alone surpassed, in the foreseeable future.
In Johnson’s eyes, however, it is not his most important publication. That distinction belongs to the World Atlas of Wine, which first appeared in 1971, and regularly updated since. In his autobiography, subtitled A Life Uncorked, he describes himself as an “encyclopaedist”.
He said: “I have spent a great part of the past few decades making lists… To me, lists have a fascination, even a sort of poetry of their own.”
The World Atlas of Wine, which started as an attempt to map every vineyard in the world, is a geographical example of this activity. Johnson saw his Pocket Wine Book, published six years later, as an “aide-mémoire” or annotated index to the Atlas. He had little expectation it would take on a life of its own. He had already written his first book for James Mitchell and John Beazley in 1970.
It was the coming together of these three men, Mitchell as publisher, Beazley as production expert and Johnson the wine man that made them the world’s largest wine publishers.
Johnson describes the first two editions of the pocket guide as “almost spacious…on rather good paper”. To cope with the number of entries, the third edition (1979) required a diary binder and a slightly smaller size to match the binding machinery.
In this edition Johnson introduced vintages, which remain the largest task in its annual update, now performed by an international panel. They follow Johnson’s conservatism, advising that good claret should not be drunk for about six years.
He also played an active role in preserving one of his great loves, the Hungarian dessert wine Tokay, after the fall of communism.
In other respects, Johnson has been one of the biggest champions of New World wine, an issue that will be considered in a future column.
The guide was described, in 1979, as “the first wine-buyer’s almanac”. Its most remarkable feature is how little it has changed over 30 years. It is now more comprehensive. The format and descriptions, however, remain largely unchanged.
But over the years, what started as a labour of love has become a daily grind and part of the wine writing industry. “List-making” Johnson writes “is not what it used to be… Urban man now lives in interchangeable cities” and more and more of the wines lovingly mapped in the Atlas have become detached from the vineyards that produced them.
Johnson has also found time to write An International Survey of Trees (1973), his favourite publication on the Principles of Gardening (1979) and run the Sunday Times Wine Club.
The impression emerges that he has enjoyed a charmed life. His effortless move from Cambridge to Vogue, thence to Queen magazine, as wine writer is a classic tale of the 1960s.
His alliance with Mitchell and Beazley was part of an emerging consumerism, heavily encouraged in the 1980s. There is, however, no sense of the sheer difficulty of wine making or the economic volatility of the trade itself. Most French winemakers tend just a few hectares and their livelihoods regularly hang by a thread.
It’s interesting to compare what the rest of us were doing at the same time.
We were frequenting coffee bars, having fast food at Wimpys, then dining at Berni Inns, which represented, at the time, a new middle-class sophistication.
Only a few years earlier, the British experience of eating out, after years of severe rationing, according to Raymond Postgate, left diners “suspicious, after a lifetime of suffering”. Johnson’s pocket guide, as much as any other, has been part of a major change.
It has both defined and helped to develop our wine drinking habits.
But this achievement raises as many questions as it answers. |
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