Composers or conductors: why chefs are so much sexier than winemakers

Ferran Adrià, Thomas Keller, Heston Blumenthal, Alain Ducasse...  Why are these men so much more famous across the planet than any winemaker? After all, only a tiny number of people will ever eat the dishes they prepare - and not many more will attempt to cook them (however many of their collections of recipes may be gathering dust on bookshelves). 

The point about these chefs is that they are creators. They take all kinds of foods and, using more or less sophisticated techniques and, more crucially, their tastebuds and imaginations, turn them into hedonistic artworks that no-one has ever experienced before. 

The wine world is less fond of creators. It hugely prefers recipe-followers. Look almost anywhere: if someone has planted Cabernet Sauvignon, there's an odds-on chance that it is going to be blended with Merlot or Cabernet Franc, possibly with a little Petit Verdot and even Malbec, in homage to the tablets of stone a vinous deity handed down to the Moses of the Médoc. Want to do something interesting with Syrah? Well, the only solution is to throw in some Viognier. After all, that's what the official Côte Rôtie instruction book prescribes. Sauvignon? The answer has to be Semillon.

If the food world was run by winemakers, diners in London, New York and Sydney would struggle to find alternatives to coq au vin, osso bucco and sherry trifle. French gourmets happily tuck into “classic” Gallic dishes that rely on foreign imports such as tomatoes, rice and potatoes, but how many wine authorities in France would countenance the use their vineyards of Tempranillo or Gruner Veltliner?

Of course, there have been a few winemakers with chef-like imaginations. Don Eloy Lecanda y Chaves, creator of Vega Sicilia, Fernando Nicolau de Almeida inventor of Barca Velha in the Douro and Max Schubert with Grange all broke new ground with the wines they produced and in each case created the most famous and most successful wines of their country. But Vega Sicilia was born a century and a half ago, while the Portuguese and Australian wines date from the 1950s. There are other long-toothed inventions, such as Piero Antinori's Sangiovese-Cabernet Tignanello, Aimé Guibert's eccentric blend of red grapes at Mas de Daumas Gassac in Languedoc-Roussillon and Miguel Torres's brilliant commercial Viña Esmeralda, but these are scattered stars in an uninventive, follow-your-leader universe. How many recently-born wines really show signs of imagination? It says much that Dan Jago, head of Tesco’s wine department described McGuigan’s Semillon Blanc as the best vinous innovation he had seen. I’m certainly not criticising that wine – it’s a very clever creation, a genuinely new style and a huge commercial success, and I have been working with McGuigan on a couple of similarly innovative new marketing projects – but it should be facing a lot more competition than it has had so far.

One of the joys for me of having crossed the line seven years ago from being an observer (as a journalist) to a player (as a producer and consultant) has been the chance not only to witness the birth of wines like that Semillon Blanc from behind the scenes, but to attempt a little innovative blending of my own. When Hugh Ryman, Kevin Shaw and I first set about creating Le Grand Noir and Greener Planet wines, we threw away the rule books and treated the vats and vineyards at the Celliers Jean d’Alibert winery as though they were shelves in a kitchen. That’s how the le Grand Noir Chardonnay came to include a generous dollop of Viognier; it made for a far more interesting drink. The same happened when we reversed the favour: the Chardonnay freshened up the Viognier beautifully, and  little Grenache added a lovely strawberry note to the Pinot Noir. For the first release of Greener Planet, we had limited numbers of vineyards that had been accredited as being sustainable, but that led us to come up with a Marsanne-Chardonnay blend with a style that is all of its own that is beginning to develop an enthusiastic following. I’m currently working on an exciting new blend in another country that I find really exciting.

But new blends and styles are rare in wine, nowadays, and rarely the object of praise: just look at the critical manure that has been heaped onto New Zealand’s hugely popular Sparkling Sauvignon Blancs. If innovative wines received even a tenth of the interest and enthusiasm currently being devoted to orange, cloudy and frankly reactionary ‘natural’ sulphur-free, wines made in amphorae, maybe there would be a few more winemakers with a little more international renown.

Most wine producers seem to be content with being conductors playing other people’s scores. What I want to see is a few more composers. A few more jazz musicians who, like those chefs, are prepared to take us on journeys to places we have never been.

Maybe we’ll see a few really inventive wines at WINESTARS at the London International Wine Fair. I really hope so. (If you make or know of one that is not yet on sale in the UK, please do take advantage of the free entry). 


If you have the time and/or inclination, please do read the comments to this post and my follow-up piece Let's Talk Dirty - the economics of wine