My England: Wine guru Oz Clarke
Wine writer and broadcaster Oz Clarke talks about English wine, English pubs, Charles Dickens and why we should support our sausage-roll producers
My ideal dinner guest would be Charles Dickens. I love his descriptions of eating and drinking – passionate, involved, steamy, sweaty, indulgent. I’d love to share a meal with him and show him how some great traditions of English eating and drinking are still there – and how some, like English sparkling wine, are new and exciting and would make him very proud.
The idea for my new book on English wine came because its time had come. I’m a country boy. I grew up in Kent, and I’ve been surrounded by our English wine revolution since I was a kid. I’ve always supported the underdog. I’ve always encouraged newcomers. I’ve been thrilled by the astonishing progress English wine has made this century, led by worldbeating sparkling wines. And when the 2018 vintage brought in a crop of beautifully ripe grapes, and twice as many of them as ever before, I felt a tremendous head of steam building up, a momentum growing, and I said – I have to write a book. Not for experts, but for all, to draw them in to this thrilling and totally new world of English wine, as good as any other in any corner of the globe.
The book tells the story of English wine through my eyes. Wines I’ve drunk, people I’ve met, places I’ve known and loved. There is a little history there, going back to the Romans, but mostly it’s my history, and my relationship with our astonishing new world of English wine. I tell the stories, I interview the producers, I sit on the hilltops, and amble through the meadows, and dally at the edge of our vineyards as the vines flower, their scent drifting through the cool air, and our world is full of the optimism of dreaming of a great English vintage to come. No writer has ever been able to do this before in England. I’m grateful to have the chance.
Climate change is better described as climate chaos. Few corners of the world will find any good in it. But the English vineyards will. Most of Europe will become hotter and drier, to the massive detriment of its traditional wine styles. In Britain we didn’t have a traditional wine style. We are creating numerous new wine styles, both still and sparkling, as our warming world, at least briefly, blesses England with the chance to be dubbed “The greatest cool climate wine country in the world”. That’s the target. It’s attainable.
I’ve been meaning to write a book about English wine for a while now. The historic 2018 vintage – bigger than ever, riper than ever – kicked me into start mode. I simply had to share my excitement with the rest of the nation. And that meant I had to redouble my research, get out one more time – into Kent and Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire, Essex and Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire. And Wales, too. I came back to stuffy, hot old London, my mind buzzing with images and memories of how glorious our precious country is, and how our vineyards are now a beautiful and indispensable part of it.
It’s important to support our producers. Whatever our political views, Britain is now in a very strange place. The things we hold dear, the places we love, the communities we live in – for all of these to survive and to thrive, we absolutely must believe in them, and we absolutely must support our local producers.
I’ve written this book about English and Welsh wine, but I could have written it about breweries, cider makers, cheese makers, sausage-roll makers, fishmongers, butchers, bakers, grocers – all of these businesses are what make our communities worth living in. Support them, buy from them, help them make a living, and we have a thriving community to enjoy. Ignore them, and we will soon be living in a land of ghosts. Visiting your local vineyard and buying its wine is a pleasurable way to keep the ghosts at bay.
I massively missed going to the pub during lockdown . . . but it’s more than just going to the pub. My one lockdown drink fantasy isn’t a wine fantasy. I am dreaming of the first time I walk into the pub and up to the bar and order a pint of fresh, handdrawn, locally brewed English bitter. I can see the beer surging into the glass, the foam overflowing down the side, and I dip my face into it to catch the uplifting snatch of hops and malt, and I catch a fleck of foam on my nose. Do I care? Then I take a long, deep, three-months-dreamed-of draught of English heaven, and I’ll drain the glass before I draw breath.
Where? In 100 pubs in England, in a thousand, from Hadrian’s Wall to Cornwall’s Lizard Point, from the White Cliffs of Dover to the Cumbrian Coast, I can stride in and find the welcome of an English pub and the deep emotional joy of a fresh-pulled pint of Best.
How can I tell what my favourite place in England is? Every time I head off into our lovely country I find new places that make my heart race and my spirits soar. Sometimes they’re new to me, but sometimes they’re places that made me happy long, long ago. If I have to choose just one place – and I wish I didn’t – I think I’ll choose the bright, high, sun-swept, storm-bruised headlands of the White Cliffs of Dover.
My earliest memory is of my father finishing his Doctorate at Clare College Cambridge. We were living nearby in Papworth and aged about two, I have a striking memory of Clare Bridge, the Cambridge Backs, and King’s College Chapel. Although I went to Oxford, it was these memories of Cambridge that inspired me to get there. When I wasn’t doing enough work at school, my father took me for a picnic in Clare College gardens. “Would you like to study here?” he asked. “Oh, yes, Daddy”. “Well do some bloody work then.” That got me into Oxford!
The key to talking about wine without being pretentious is to be honest. Don’t make it up. Tell people what you are experiencing with the wine, but only as a way to encourage them to decide what they are experiencing. Every one of us will have different experiences with wine, because how we enjoy flavours and smells is dictated by what flavours and smells have been important to us in our lives. And every one of our lives is different. So every one of us will experience tastes and smells in a different way. I offer up my experiences in the hope that they will open up yours.
Oz’s new book, English Wine, is published by Pavilion Books and is available 3 September, £16.99.