[wine] Every Day Drinking - Book

Thirst: Practical advice from an everyday drinker Jon BonnéSunday, April 19, 2009 Kingsley Amis raises a glass when he was awarded the Book... In the interest of oversimplification, I split wine writing into what might be called the British and American styles. The British school is wine by comparison: This '02 Savigny is reminiscent of that cheeky '93 Chambolle. The American school is fruit salad: quince, blueberry, pineapple and tangerine. Both run the risk of boring us all to death. So it was doubly refreshing to finally dive into Kingsley Amis' "Everyday Drinking" (Bloomsbury; $20) which might well be the best drinking book of the past year. That's not entirely a legit statement, since Sir Amis died in 1995 and the book's a reprint of Amis' three drinking tomes written between 1972 and 1984: "On Drink," "Everyday Drinking" and "How's Your Glass?" The first two are nothing short of a salve for the shortcomings of modern drink writing. (The last is in quiz form, essentially one long boozy bout of Trivial Pursuit.) For at a time when drinking well is nearly acceptable as a noble pursuit, the art of the bibulous scribe - like all writers - seems ever more in peril. Amis, to me, is a dose of salvation. Perhaps that's because, when not contemplating the inside of his glass, he was also one of the last century's most accomplished British novelists. He was also the supreme drunken skeptic, which allows "Everyday Drinking" to be a manifesto against pretense. As in this declaration: "Drinks writers have got to put on a show of covering the whole subject, but I would never believe a man who claimed to be equally interested or qualified in all the kinds of booze." Admittedly, Amis is an imperfect messenger. His clearly conflicted relationship with wine, for instance, gives pause, only because he seems to have had an innate distaste for the stuff, or at least willful ignorance. At various turns he spurns it ("Vintages - aargh! Most of the crap talked about wine centers on these"), tolerates it and occasionally offers worthy advice: "(A) good policy is to forget names, labels and vintages and go for a wine imported by a shipper whose wares you have enjoyed in the past." Such is his conflict that at times it descends into outright contradiction, as when he argues to "drink any wine you like with any dish" on one hand, then suggests that "it doesn't go with all food, or even most food, not in the UK." And there are moments when his declarative style falls short. When he says of Champagne that "any wine from France under this name will be good," you can't help but wonder how much of an uncritical drinker he might have been. Much has been made of Amis' bolder themes, particularly on hangovers both physical and metaphysical. (To cure the former, he recommends, among other things, "half an hour in an open aeroplane"; for the latter, read the final lines of "Paraside Lost.") His "Mean Sod's Guide," on fooling guests into happily drinking swill, is a classic of tipsy misanthropy. But there is no shortage of practical advice; his thoughts on stocking a bar should be mandatory reading. I especially endorse the suggestion of a separate drinks-only fridge, so it won't be filled "with irrelevant rubbish like food." The true pleasure here is Amis' comfort with his own limitations and prejudices. In an era of utter objectivity about drink - Moses came down from the mount, and on these tablets he scoreth an 87 - we can reflect back about how Amis wrote simply as a drinker experiencing the world. No press junkets. No mixologists' navel-gazing. No wine babble. Amis was a brilliant writer, turned loose on booze. In the Twitterific era, when enthusiasm handily trumps skill, his lucid prose is a reminder why wordsmithing matters. The net result is an brilliantly imperfect guide to drink, happily nested with inconsistencies. A moment after declaring Scotch an unsuitable base for a cocktail, Amis finds a recipe for a Godfather (three parts whisky, one amaretto) and must recant. As he puts it: "So much for infallibility just now." We whose job it is to codify pleasure should be required to hang that on our walls. Words to drink by "An underregarded but surely powerful argument against wine is that very few of us can afford to drink quality wine with any regularity, whereas a fair number can afford reasonable amounts of the best beer available most nights of the week. ... And yet the blighters keep insisting on wine, not just with food but before meals, after meals, anytime." On when to drink Champagne: "Best of all on its own, I have heard its admirers say, about 11:30 a.m., with a dry biscuit. Which leaves plenty of time to sneak out to the bar for a real drink." "What I have not done is drink first-rate table wines at their place of origin, work my way through classic vintages and develop an educated palate. To do that, what you really need, shorn of the talk, is a rich father, and I missed it." On hangovers: "Immediately on waking, start telling yourself how lucky you are to be feeling so bloody awful. This ... recognizes the truth that if you do not feel bloody awful after a hefty night then you are still drunk, and must sober up in a waking state before hangover dawns." "Whatever the men in the know may say, a German wine label is a fearful thing to decipher." "One infallible mark of your true drink-man is that he reads everything on the subject that comes his way, from full-dress books to those tiny recipe-leaflets the makers tend to hang round the necks of their bottles." Jon Bonnés The Chronicle's wine editor. E-mail him at jbonne(a)sfchronicle.com. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/19/FDSP16RJD2.DTL This article appeared on page E - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle -- ------------------------------ * Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * University of Minnesota, mobile : 651/645-0753 * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *