Jancis Robinson, the British grande dame of world wines, had sketchy impressions of Switzerland and Swiss wine after she was invited here last year, which left some of us thinking she hadn’t really paid attention.
She might have made up for it today with an article on what you can expect to find in the new, fourth edition of the Oxford Companion to Wine (913 pages, £40).
Her article, on her own web site and in the Financial Times, where she is the wine columnist, begins “Arvine, Coteaux Bourguignons, CellarTracker, colluvium, Stéphane Derenoncourt, vineyard ecosystem, geosmin, Grignan-les-Adhémar, Historic Vineyard Society, ingredient labelling …”
Arvine! We know it, we love it and we’re glad she’s deigned to include it, since she’s not exactly worked out why so many people love Chasselas. And thank goodness it starts with an “a” so comes at the start of her list of the 300 new entries out of a total of 4,000.
Maybe I’ll buy the book after all and replace my frayed first edition, which says that Georgia is part of the Soviet Union. Maybe I’ll try the e-book version, due out before the end of September.
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