Why do wine descriptors like cat’s pee alienate many wine lovers? Charles Jennings and Paul Keers answer that and more in “I Bought It So I’ll Drink It”

Natalie MacLean
Jun4th

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Introduction

How does using everyday metaphors make wine writing more relatable? How has the pressure to be an expert in everything turned simple pleasures into social competition? Does buying your own wine versus getting free samples make you a better wine writer?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Charles Jennings and Paul Keers, co-authors of the hilarious book I Bought It So I’ll Drink It.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

Giveaway

Three of you are going to win a copy of their terrific book, I Bought It So I’ll Drink It.

 

How to Win

To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’ve posted a review of the podcast.

It takes less than 30 seconds: On your phone, scroll to the bottom here, where the reviews are, and click on “Tap to Rate.”

After that, scroll down a tiny bit more and click on “Write a Review.” That’s it!

I’ll choose three people randomly from those who contact me.

Good luck!

 

Join me on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube Live Video

Join the live-stream video of this conversation on Wednesday at 7 pm eastern on Instagram Live Video, Facebook Live Video or YouTube Live Video.

I’ll be jumping into the comments as we watch it together so that I can answer your questions in real-time.

I want to hear from you! What’s your opinion of what we’re discussing? What takeaways or tips do you love most from this chat? What questions do you have that we didn’t answer?

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Highlights

  • How did Charles and Paul meet?
  • What was the first bottle of wine they shared, and how did they realize they had the same approach to bad wine?
  • What was it like to meet legendary wine critic Oz Clarke?
  • When did Paul and Charles discover their love for writing?
  • What were Charles and Paul’s best and worst moments in their writing careers?
  • How did their Sediment blog create a stir with the PR people in the wine industry?
  • Where did the title “I Bought It So I’ll Drink It” come from?
  • Did buying their own wines give them a different perspective than other wine writers who are given promotional bottles?
  • How did the collaborative approach to writing I Bought It So I’ll Drink It work?
  • Which writers have influenced Charles and Paul’s writing?
  • Is the tension between wine snobbery and enjoyment unique to wine?
  • What was the most pretentious wine moment Paul and Charles witnessed?
  • How did Charles and Paul develop their distinctive vocabularies for describing wines?
  • Which overused wine descriptors do they find cringy?
  • What’s changed about wine criticism or writing since they published their book?

 

Key Takeaways

  • How does using everyday metaphors make wine writing more relatable?
    • Charles and Paul explain that they drew their descriptions from real life. There’s a tendency in wine writing to use metaphors that you wouldn’t necessarily experience. I mean, I’ve got a cat, but I really wouldn’t use the term cat’s pee in describing any wine. I don’t know what cat’s pee actually tastes like. Whereas if I talk about wine smelling of ink, well, people know what ink smells like, and it seemed more appropriate to use ink as an analogy.
  • How has the pressure to be an expert in everything turned simple pleasures into social competition?
    • The authors say that everybody has to be a bit of an expert about everything these days. You can’t just eat food. You have to know so much more and hold so many more opinions on food. The one where it really gets me is like travel and tourism. It’s not just a question of, “Oh, we’ve been to France, we’ve gone to Italy, we’ve made it to the United States,” or something like that. It’s how you did it, and where you stayed, and what you did, and what tours you went on, and it’s so full of itself. Then it becomes a transaction when talking with friends. Well, I’ll trade you a trip to Singapore for a trip to New Zealand or something like that. All right, well, I’ll see your New Zealand, and I’ll raise you a Thailand. That drives me around the bend.
  • Does buying your own wine versus getting free samples make you a better wine writer?
    • As Charles and Paul observe I think the fact that we did buy our wine is quite fundamental to a difference between Sediment and other wine writing. We spent our own money and I think you have a different perspective on wine when you have paid for it. Hopefully, it put us in connection with more of our readers. They had to do the same thing, go out and buy it. Maybe that gave us a slightly different slant on wine buying and drinking as well.

 

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One of the differences between us and the other wine writers was that we actually drink wine. - Paul Keers Paul Keers Click to tweet

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It seems there’s quite a small word store for wine writing where you’re always having to reshuffle the same words to try and create some sort of nuance. - Charles Jennings Charles Jennings Click to tweet

 

About Charles Jennings & Paul Keers

Charles Jennings and Paul Keers are award-winning writers based in London, England.

Charles Jennings is probably best known for his wiseguy travelogue Up North and the Edwardian social history Them And Us; for his writings on architecture, property and the urban environment, in The Guardian and Telegraph newspapers; and for his wine-writing shenanigans with Sediment, in both blog and book form. Paul Keers has also written for various British newspapers and magazines and was the Launch Editor of GQ magazine in the UK. He is currently the Chair of the TS Eliot Society UK.

Charles and Paul co-authored the wine blog Sediment, described by New Statesman writer and Guardian literary critic Nick Lezard as “the finest wine blog available to humanity.” The blog became the basis for their book, I Bought It So I’ll Drink It. Book-Prize-winning novelist Julian Barnes called it “The funniest wine-book I’ve read in a long time. Not just laugh-aloud funny but snortingly, choke-on-your-cornflakes funny – up there with Kingsley Amis and Jay McInerney.” Their book won the prestigious André Simon Award.

 

Resources

 

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  • The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.

 

Transcript

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 How does using everyday metaphors make wine writing more relatable? How has the pressure to be an expert in everything? Turn simple pleasures into social competition? And does buying your own wine versus getting free samples make you a better wine writer? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with Charles Jennings and Paul Kurz, co-authors of the hilarious book. I bought it, so I’ll drink it by the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover the first bottle of wine Charles and Paul shared, and how they realized they had the same approach to bad wine, what it was like to meet the legendary wine critic Oz Clarke, when and how Paul and Charles discovered their love for writing their best and worst moments in their writing careers. How their sediment blog created a stir with PR people in the wine industry, where the title I bought it, so I’ll drink it came from whether the tension between wine snobbery and enjoyment is unique to wine. The most pretentious wine moment Paul and Charles ever witnessed.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:12 How they develop their distinctive vocabularies for describing wines overused wine descriptors they find particularly cringeworthy. And what’s changed about wine criticism and writing since they published their book. Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started. Welcome to episode 340 on CTV’s The Social. We chatted about great wines for barbecue fare on Father’s Day, which is coming up very soon, so I will share that with you now. So some dads are just not wine guys. They’re beer guys. But I’m saying the selections I’ve brought today can help change that. Yes, it’s mostly a perception that wine is only for fancier occasions than beer, but it’s just not true.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:46 Any time you think of having a beer, you can probably substitute it with a bubbly. And I’m not talking about fancy-pants champagne, but value-priced sparkling wines from other regions. They’re both frothy and fun, like our first wine: the Villa Conchi Brut Selección Cava. Cava is a refreshing sparkling wine from Spain. It offers crisp notes of green apple and is a fraction of the price of champagne. It would pair beautifully with grilled seafood.

Apart from price, what’s the difference between this bubbly and champagne? So cava means “cave” in Spanish, and it’s the country’s sparkling wine that’s made using often the same methods as champagne, but with local grapes.

Next up, I have the Creekside Sauvignon Blanc, and this is from a small winery on the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario. This white wine is zesty and bone-dry with notes of lemongrass, lime and green herbs. I’d pair this with grilled seafood again. Actually, grilled veggies would work. Even grilled chicken. So why do bubbly and white wines make great summer wines, even apart from barbecue?

Natalie MacLean 00:03:57 Well, zippy whites and sparklers are often good starters when folks are sitting and chatting or wandering around the backyard as they wait for the meat to cook, or veggies or seafood. These wines are served chilled so they have that pleasant cooling effect, much like your water sprinkler. Yet they’re aromatic enough to compete with smoke, sunscreen, smells, and summer breezes. So the hosts had a question for me from Jess Allen, one of the hosts that wasn’t on the show that day. She said her dad likes big, juicy, overly oaked New World Chardonnays, but she likes Old World dry and Minerally Chablis, which is Unoaked Chardonnay made from northern France. What is a daughter to do? A big, buttery Chardonnay will pair well with the cherry flavors of grilled chicken and pork, whereas your Unoaked Lighter Chardonnay just will go better with seafood and veggies. So you could do a mixed grill with the food and not compromise on the wines. Or if that’s too much wine, you could either buy half bottles or make your own splits by pouring half a bottle into a clean, empty bottle that you save for another night.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:05 A third option is to find wines that are mid style wise, like a Chenin Blanc or a semillon. Next up, a sparkling rosé. Why does it pair well with the grill? Well, we have this rosé sparkler from Burgundy, the Louis Bio Pearl da Brut Clément de Bourgogne. That’s a mouthful to say and to drink. Burgundy is right under champagne geographically. And again, it’s made using the same methods. And we get this superb value for this dry bubbly. It has enticing aromas of field raspberries and strawberries, and it would pair well with grilled portobello mushrooms or planked salmon. I think most people associate red wine with barbecue, so let’s try a few of those, starting with Pinot Noir. Well, I have a lovely Pinot from a boutique winery in the Okanagan called Township seven. The grapes come from a vineyard that’s sustainably managed and planted in glacial till, a mix of gravel and boulders allowing for excellent drainage. It was aged in French oak barrels and it has these seductive aromas of black cherry and earth.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:12 It would be terrific with grilled chicken. Which red wines maybe don’t work with barbecue? Well, I think some wines are best reserved for indoor dinners. Bringing out your well salad, Bordeaux and Burgundy for hamburgers and steaks is kind of like wearing a tuxedo in your backyard. Not only would you be a social misfit, but it’s just wasted effort. Mature, elegant wines go down in flames next to the grill. Their subtle flavors are just overwhelmed.

Lastly, we have a Shiraz. This one is the Wakefield Jaraman Shiraz from Australia. It’s a blockbuster red wine with notes of deep, ripe, dark berries, plums and smoke. This robust Shiraz is produced from grapes grown in the Clare Valley and McLaren Vale. The wine was aged in American oak barrels. It has the mouthwatering juiciness to pair with charred meat, but not too much tannin, which would accentuate any dry taste. Pair this with charcoal-grilled steak.

Any final tips for keeping wine cool under the summer sun? So an ice bucket in the shade is an easy solution, even for red wines, if you think they’re getting a little too warm.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:29 If you’re at the cottage or by the lake, you can put the bottles in the water at the shoreline. If your bottles need to be chilled quickly, wrap a cold, wet towel around them and put them in the freezer for 15 minutes. Just don’t forget them because they will explode. And where can we find these wines Online on Instagram. I’m at Natalie MacLean wine and online. My website is Natalie MacLean. Com. Back to today’s episode. Three of you are going to win a copy of our guests terrific book. I bought it so I’ll drink it. That makes me smile every time I say it. I also still have two copies of the memoir Grape Expectations A Family’s Vineyard Adventure in France, filled with vivid descriptions of delicious wines, great food and stunning views, and a unique insight into the world of the winemaker. Written by our guest last week, Caro Fili, as well as two copies of the award winning book vines in a Cold Climate by Henry Jeffreys. If you’d like to win a copy of any of these books, please email me and let me know.

Natalie MacLean 00:08:34 You’d like to win. It doesn’t matter where you live, I’ll choose seven winners randomly from those who contact me at Nathalie at Natalie MacLean. Com. In other bookish news, if you’re reading the paperback or e-book or listening to the audiobook of my memoir wine, which on fire, rising from the ashes of divorce, defamation and Drinking Way Too Much, a national bestseller and one of Amazon’s best books of the year. I’d love to hear from you at Natalie at Natalie MacLean dot com. I’d also be happy to send you beautifully designed, personally signed book plates for the copies you buy or give as gifts. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at Natalie MacLean 340. The paperback usually arrives within a day or two of ordering. The e-book and audiobook are instantly available. Okay, on with the show. Charles Jennings and Paul Kirsch are award winning writers based in London, England. Charles is best known for his wiseguy travelogue Up North and the Edwardian social history Them in Us, as well as for his writing on architecture, property and the urban environment in the Guardian and Telegraph newspapers.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:48 Paul Pierce has also written for various British newspapers and magazines, and was the launch editor for GQ magazine in the UK. He is currently the chair of the T.S. Eliot Society, UK. Charles and Paul co-authored the wine blog sediment, described by New Statesman writer and Guardian literary critic Nick Lazard as the finest wine blog available to humanity. The blog became the basis for their book. I bought it, so I’ll drink it. The Booker Prize winning novelist Julian Barnes called it the funniest wine book I’ve read in a long time. Not just laugh out loud funny, but snorting choke on your cornflakes funny up there with Kingsley Amis and Jay McInerney. I can attest to that. I snorted quite a bit. Reading it, their book won the prestigious Andre Simon Award and they join us now from their homes in England. Welcome, Charles and Paul. So great to have you here with us.

Paul Keers 00:10:44 I know.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:45 All right. Cheers. So before we dive into your book, let’s hear a bit about you. How did you meet? Was there a meet cute or how did it happen?

Charles Jennings 00:10:54 Paul, do you want to go first? And I can contradict you.

Paul Keers 00:10:57 You can contradict me. I think it was when I was working as a commissioning editor on the Sunday supplement of the Sunday Telegraph magazine, and I needed a writer. I can’t remember what the assignment was, and someone recommended Charles, and whatever it was, he did it wonderfully, as he did over the following years. I kept using him and we became firm friends and professional colleagues after that.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:25 Sounds great. And can you remember the first wine that you shared together?

Charles Jennings 00:11:29 I’d done a piece or a couple of pieces for you, and we went out to this Poncy restaurant in Knightsbridge. We must have had a bottle of wine or something there. Wouldn’t that be it?

Paul Keers 00:11:39 I think that was it. Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:41 So a poncy wine, but not memorable.

Paul Keers 00:11:43 Well, it was memorable because it wasn’t very good. And we got to the end of the first bottle and said, God, this is terrible, isn’t it? Should we get another bottle? And I love that. And we sort of realised we both had the same attitude to bad wine.

Charles Jennings 00:11:57 At some point, Paul Foster completely started explaining about a man whose hobby was to carve mushrooms out of wood. Well remember that.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:05 I can see how that would go.

Paul Keers 00:12:07 Oh.

Charles Jennings 00:12:08 Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, well, okay, we’ll just see where this goes.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:11 There might be something to that wine then. Okay. Now you’ve written so much together about wine. Is there anything about wine that you disagree on?

Paul Keers 00:12:19 Just about everything, I think. That’s probably why sediment worked.

Charles Jennings 00:12:26 All right. I think basically we’re in complete agreement about almost everything, aren’t we?

Natalie MacLean 00:12:30 I can see how this is going to go. That’s great. So, Paul, tell us about your encounter. Speaking of wine writers with the legendary wine critic Oz Clarke.

Paul Keers 00:12:41 This was one of the things once we started writing sediment, we got invited to tastings and, you know, we were complete interlopers. We hadn’t got any experience, we didn’t know what was going on, but we’d obviously written at that point quite a few pieces making fun of the whole wine industry.

Paul Keers 00:13:00 And we went to this tasting. It was actually the Oval cricket ground in London. After a little while, I sort of nudged this. I was Clarke, you know, let’s go and say hello. Of course. Charles. No, no, no. Yes. Let’s go on. So we go up and say, oh, hi, we’re KG and PK of Sediment blog. And he just looked at us and said, you bad, bad boys. I walked away and that was it. It was. And we thought, right, that’s where we stand in the echelon of wine writing.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:29 Well, at least he knew who you were. That’s better than anonymity.

Charles Jennings 00:13:34 I have a feeling I might be bottling it up with another occasion. They were really nice wines. They were just drinking them as fast as they could and as they’re spitting. And we were all sort of leaving and we’re all coming down a flight of stairs, and we all sort of fell down the stairs and clocked about the same time.

Charles Jennings 00:13:49 And that’s when we were having this conversation, I can’t remember. Does that ring a bell?

Paul Keers 00:13:53 It does, it does. I think one of the differences throughout the course of sediment between us and the other wine writers was that we actually drink wine. I think a lot of wine writers just kind of taste it and spit it away, and we drink it. And I think that can on occasion, make a sort of social difference between ourselves and some of the professionals.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:15 Absolute dedication to your craft. Yeah. Fittings for amateurs.

Charles Jennings 00:14:19 Almost monastic and single mindedness. Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:24 So, Charles, maybe you could tell us when you thought you’d become a writer. Like, was there a moment? Was it your child or not?

Charles Jennings 00:14:33 Really? No. I mean, it was. I could remember that’s the only thing I ever really wanted to do. But I was sort of ten or something. I thought, oh, I’ll write a book. You know, it’s like I said, I thought, well, if I could do this, it’d be a great way of getting out of work.

Charles Jennings 00:14:45 So that was really, you know, I could just be left to follow my own kind of instincts and maybe make some money out of it, but that was it. The word go. That’s all I really ever wanted to do that day.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:54 And you, Paul? Maybe. How did you get started? Maybe your best and worst moments.

Paul Keers 00:14:59 I always say it sounds like I won my career in a tombola because I won a Cosmopolitan Magazine young journalist competition. So I had my first piece published in cosmopolitan while I was still at university. And when I left, I got a job there and started working there, and it sort of took off from there. I mean, I’d done student journalism. I really wanted to work in magazine journalism, and this was like the most wonderful opportunity. I spent the first couple of years of my career working there, kind of token man on cosmopolitan.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:32 So, yeah, speaking of cosmopolitan now, what did you write about for that contest?

Paul Keers 00:15:37 I took the male point of view on things, and they used to have a column every month written by a man.

Paul Keers 00:15:44 I wrote one of those, and then I wrote another one. And then when I was there, I kept coming up with these sort of male viewpoints on things. I was the right kind of age, early 20s and so on. Yeah, I just kept taking a male viewpoint on things, and they thought this was a valuable thing to have in a women’s magazine.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:01 Just a little bit. Yeah, up to a point. So what were your best and worst moments, do you think, Paul, of your writing career? Do any stand out?

Paul Keers 00:16:09 Possibly the worst moment was when, after cosmopolitan, I wrote freelance for a while, and then I got an opportunity to work at the Daily Mail on the featured desk. And they used to have this sort of ritual in the morning. They’d cut stories out of the upmarket papers and give them to the feature writers to see if they could make something of it. And I’d gone there thinking, yeah, because, you know, I’d write about young men and yuppies as it was at the time, and they brought around this story and put it in front of me.

Paul Keers 00:16:35 And it was about parking tickets for diplomatic immune members of foreign embassies in London, how they weren’t paying their parking tickets. See what you can do with that. I thought, well, I’ve got two choices here. I can either go and say, look, this really isn’t the sort of thing I do or I can have a go. And I thought, I’ll have a go. And 4:00 in the afternoon I’d written something and they said, yeah, that’s okay. Yeah. Okay. We’ll use that to see you tomorrow. And I thought, yes, I’ve made it. The worst moment was looking at that and thinking, I can’t do this. And fortunately it seemed that I could.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:12 How about the best moment? Any stand out?

Paul Keers 00:17:15 It sounds a bit corny, but actually, when Julian Barnes, you quoted him earlier on there, he actually sort of gave us our award when we won it for sediment. And I thought, this is astonishing. Here is this really major writer Later saying how much he enjoys our writing.

Paul Keers 00:17:34 It was a terrific moment. You know, the fact it was him, rather than just some kind of industry award, that meant an enormous amount.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:42 Fabulous. Charles, have a best and worst moment your writing career?

Charles Jennings 00:17:46 In a way, it’s the same moment it was the best and worst moment was like 30 years ago or something. And I’d written a book about the north of England. It was sort of Bill Bryson, kind of funny sort of travelogue kind of thing. And it was doing quite well. And I went up to Manchester in the north of England, to TV studio to take part in a show and flog the book. And it’s this big studio, dazzlingly lit studio. And there were scores of people in this great big audience facing me, and they just put me on a sort of bar stool right in the middle of the floor, and all these eyes bearing down on me. And I thought, oh, what am I going to do now? There was a kind of guy, you know, fronting it, but I thought, I’m just completely on my own.

Charles Jennings 00:18:26 And also, I’d been very rude about Blackpool, you know, the holiday to a clatter or holiday turn. And they’ve got all these landladies from Blackpool and they bussed them in and they were having a go at me and I thought, this is not good. But at the same time I thought, but then I’m on TV, thousands of people are going to watch this and they’ve all come here and they can’t beat me up on television because the cameras are. So that was it. It was sort of all in one. It was a very odd sort of experience, but something like that. That was pretty good.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:56 That sounds intense. Did you go out the back way after that?

Charles Jennings 00:18:59 I can’t quite remember how I got out. I was sort of I was just ushered off this, you know, about a hundred yards of empty floor and then put into a cab. I wasn’t pursued down the street by hordes of angry Blackpool landladies. So, yeah, I got away.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:13 That’s good. Your sediment blog that came before the book, obviously.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:18 What was the most controversial post that you had on the blog or the one that caused the most reaction?

Paul Keers 00:19:25 The only one I can particularly remember is I was very critical of a wine making enormous sort of fan of it, and suddenly started getting all these posts replies saying, who do you think you are? You don’t know anything about wine. Give it up now! What are you doing? And gradually realize that the PR agency for this particular wine chain had put up all these fake responses from these people, and but what was great was that a lot of our regular readers started posting things saying, just keep out of this. We love this. We just forget it. So that was the biggest battle, but it was sort of an artificial one in a way. You know, once we realized there is a term for it, I can’t remember what it is now for putting up all these sort of, you know, official responses.

Charles Jennings 00:20:14 But yeah, something like that.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:15 Yeah. Okay. Yeah. A lot of that shenanigans going on.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:19 So what happened to your sediment blog archive? I found it, it’s still online so everybody can access all of the articles that you.

Charles Jennings 00:20:26 Oh yes.

Paul Keers 00:20:27 They’re all up there. I once wrote a piece about the Sediment Archive per se, because Jancis Robinson sold her archive to the San Francisco University, and when they bought it, there was this whole thing about, oh, this is a very important archive. You know, Jancis Robinson has invented whole new ways of wine writing. And I thought, well, we’ve done that. We’ve invented ways of writing about wine. When you don’t know anything about wine, you know, that’s that’s completely invention. But our archive in that sense consists of sort of a lot of supermarket receipts and, you know, notes that have dribbled off into incomprehension. And I didn’t think any university would really want to buy that. But the archive of the blog itself is very much online, and it’s still there at sediment, and I hope people are still reading it and enjoying it.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:18 And it’s lots of fun. I mean, you wrapped it up in 2020, so it’s not that long ago. And you wrote the blog for about ten years, was it?

Charles Jennings 00:21:24 Yes.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:25 Okay. Yeah. lots of interesting forays and essays and yeah, it’s good reading. You know, it’s still relevant, I think. I’m sure there’s a university out there somewhere that just has to realise the value of Fox. So I love the title of your book. I’ve bought it, so I’ll drink it. How’d you come up with that?

Charles Jennings 00:21:46 I think that my wife Suzy came up with that. Oh, yeah? Paul looks skeptical.

Paul Keers 00:21:51 No, I think you’re right.

Charles Jennings 00:21:52 I think she just came up with it, and we. We came up with sediment. Or probably Paul came up with sediment, and I think Susie jumped in and said, yeah, I bought it, so I’ll drink it, because that’s the sort of people we are.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:02 Straightforward. Yes.

Paul Keers 00:22:04 My original thinking for the subtitle for it was how low can we sink? We seem to fit sediment.

Charles Jennings 00:22:11 But no Bukowski feel. Yeah, I think.

Paul Keers 00:22:15 The buying thing is quite important, though. I mean, the fact that we, you know, I said earlier, we do actually drink the wine. The other thing was that we actually buy it. I think we had an optimistic notion that if we had a wine blog, we would get boxes of wine appearing out of nowhere for nothing, and which never really happened.

Charles Jennings 00:22:35 So that was a major disappointment. Yeah, that was a major part. That was really the whole. And wasn’t there a time because we got about two bottles or something and six months, and there was another guy who had a more successful wine blog, and he had more than he could drink. So he gave us some of his stuff. So he said, all right, we’ll take your leftovers. That’s as good as it got, really. After that. Paul pinched a few from wine tasting.

Paul Keers 00:23:01 Yes. Yeah. Which was a bit naughty. But, you know.

Charles Jennings 00:23:03 You had a special coat that you used to take wine tasting.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:06 Inside pockets.

Charles Jennings 00:23:08 You know. Yeah. You could get a decent bottle.

Paul Keers 00:23:10 Bottle in there. Yeah. I think the fact that we did actually buy our wine, though, it’s really quite fundamental to a difference between sediment and other wine writing because we actually went out, spent our own money on this, and I think you have a very different perspective on wine when you have paid for it, and when you’re going to drink it from people like yourself who taste wine. I’m sure you do buy wine yourself, but you also get a lot of it for nothing.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:37 Oh, I know, it’s just Chateau Margo. One day, Lafite the next. I mean, you just can’t keep up with it, actually.

Paul Keers 00:23:43 Yeah, yeah, I like to think when you actually have to go out to buy it and you go to wine merchants and you go to supermarkets, and you have it delivered and, you know, and you are paying for it.

Paul Keers 00:23:53 I think it gives you a different attitude. I think hopefully, maybe it put us in connection with more of our readers that they were in that same thing. They were having to go out and buy it. Maybe that gave us a slightly different slant on on wine buying and drinking as well.

Charles Jennings 00:24:10 On the rare occasions we did get anything, anything alcoholic and drinkable, I remember absolutely fawning about it. I think, you know, to say anything positive I could find I was so desperate for them to give me some more. I went to a tasting of mead. You ever come across mead? You know.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:28 Wine? Yeah.

Charles Jennings 00:24:30 Honey. Wine. And it was a mead tasting and they said we’re going to bring back mead into the mainstream. And it was horrible. It’s awful stuff. We had about seven different kinds of mead. But I went to this thing and then I wrote about it and was terribly fulsome about it, but nothing. And they said, oh, they also do gin. Even better.

Charles Jennings 00:24:46 But that was the end of that. But I felt this absolute compulsion to be secrets about the free booze, which, you know, Paul said we did most of the time. It was never the case. It was just say, well, whatever we wanted to.

Charles Jennings 00:24:57 Say.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:58 And you’d be a stream these days with influencers and so on, you’d be probably drowning in the stuff if you want to resurrect that blog.

Paul Keers 00:25:05 Well, that was some of the stuff we say about it, I don’t think.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:10 If you were to follow up with a second book today, what would you name it?

Charles Jennings 00:25:14 Oh, Lord.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:15 Would you go back to your wife there? Charlson get her to.

Paul Keers 00:25:19 I’d like 50 ways to leave your liver.

Charles Jennings 00:25:23 Oh.

Charles Jennings 00:25:24 You’ve been thinking about that, haven’t you? That didn’t come out of nowhere, actually. Probably something the same used to be about your doctor looking at you and saying. How much do you drink?

Natalie MacLean 00:25:36 Well, let’s talk more about wine writing. So your book alternates chapters between the two of you, which creates a delightful conversational rhythm.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:44 Was there any challenge in this collaborative approach, or did it just sort of flow like the wines you share?

Paul Keers 00:25:51 I think it made it easier in terms of actually doing the blog, which was where we started because we did it on alternate weeks. So you had two weeks to come up with the next piece, as it were, but there was always a piece up there every week. We never knew what the other was going to be writing about. So you’d read your partner’s piece absolutely fresh, as the public would. And I think the combination of all that made it actually quite a positive thing rather than a challenging thing.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:22 Good. Are there any writers, not just wine writers, but writers who’ve influenced your writing, whether it’s about wine or otherwise?

Charles Jennings 00:26:31 I always tried to write like Martin Amis, the late Martin Amis, not last names the novelist, but his journalism and his criticism, which lots of collections of. And they are just fantastic.

Charles Jennings 00:26:44 What makes it so good?

Charles Jennings 00:26:46 I mean, he writes about he does lots of book reviews and lots of interviews with other famous writers, not so much celebrities.

Charles Jennings 00:26:52 But obviously you’re Saul Bellows and, you know, people like that, and he really knows his stuff. He’s incredibly sharp. He’s very rude, very, very funny. And there’s no fat there, quite short. Anybody out there go and buy his collection? The War Against Cliche, which is journalism and reviews mixture of them, doesn’t get any better. And I thought, oh, well, if I can get if I can get within 100 miles of that, then? That’s what I’m aiming for.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:17 100 miles within the war against cliches. That’s what you.

Charles Jennings 00:27:21 Want to.

Charles Jennings 00:27:21 Do. So does that make sense?

Charles Jennings 00:27:23 Something that fits perfectly. You think so?

Natalie MacLean 00:27:26 How about you, Paul? Any influences?

Paul Keers 00:27:29 Again, it sounds almost like a setup from Charles, but as far as writing about wine and alcohol, on the whole as concerned, it would be Martin’s father, Kingsley Amis, who is tremendously entertaining. I mean, some of it has dated now. He was writing really in the sort of late 50s, 1960s when wine really wasn’t very well known in the UK at all.

Paul Keers 00:27:55 And he’s so entertaining about it, about drinking it, serving it, the consequences of it. And I mean, he was knowledgeable through experience, which is all I am really. He didn’t study it. He didn’t have a seat or anything like that. But he could really make you want to drink. And I think that was was a great encouragement for me.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:17 Absolutely was. He said, this is a naive little Burgundy, you know, in Brideshead Revisited, something like that when they were digging through the cellar. I can’t.

Charles Jennings 00:28:25 Remember.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:25 That was it.

Charles Jennings 00:28:26 But anyway.

Charles Jennings 00:28:26 Well, they they come across an absolutely impossibly refined wine, don’t they?

Charles Jennings 00:28:30 Yes. Yeah.

Charles Jennings 00:28:31 And Sebastian says, don’t pretend you’ve heard of it, Charles, because you won’t have words.

Charles Jennings 00:28:35 Right? It’s a gazelle.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:36 And they’re going back and forth. And it was delightful. Anyway, I’m butchering it. But yeah, his passage is. Did he have a book dedicated to wine, Kingsley Amis?

Paul Keers 00:28:46 He wrote a couple, actually.

Paul Keers 00:28:48 Okay. Yes. I can turn my head from the screen and see if I’ve got my copy, because I’ve certainly got it on the shelves in here.

Charles Jennings 00:28:57 So every day, drinking by Kingsley Amis.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:59 Drinking. That sounds familiar.

Charles Jennings 00:29:00 That is, that does.

Paul Keers 00:29:02 And that is probably it.

Charles Jennings 00:29:04 Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:04 Now, throughout your book, you wrestle between wine snobbery and enjoyment. Do you think that that particular tension is unique to wine, Or are there other consumables or product categories where it exists?

Paul Keers 00:29:18 I think I’m instinctively drawn to these kind of things. And yes, I think, for instance, menswear, the sort of brands and so on there. Charles is looking appalled there because he knows perfectly well I will go on for ages about, you know, makers of yourselves.

Charles Jennings 00:29:37 Go and have.

Charles Jennings 00:29:37 A cup of tea.

Paul Keers 00:29:40 I think the same kind of, you know, levels of aspiration and desire and quality and excellence, authenticity, all those sort of things. They, for me, hold true in menswear as they do in wine.

Paul Keers 00:29:53 So, yeah, I’d say it spreads out from from wine. Not for Charles, obviously. He’s he’s eating.

Charles Jennings 00:30:00 So well, you could see from the way, you know, I’ve just got out of bed, but,

Charles Jennings 00:30:05 Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:06 Do you find it in other categories, Charles or not? So much.

Charles Jennings 00:30:10 So. Everybody these days has to be a bit of an expert about everything. You can’t just eat food. You have to bring something special to it, and you have to know so much more and hold so many more opinions. And food is the obvious one. But the one where it really, I think, gets me like it’s like travel in a tourism. It wasn’t just a question of, oh, we’ve been to France, we’ve gone to Italy, we’ve been made to be made in the United States or something like that. It’s how you did it and where you stayed and what you did and what tours you went on. And it’s so full of itself, you know, and then it becomes a transaction, you know? Well, I’ll trade you a trip to Singapore for, you know, trip to New Zealand or something like that.

Charles Jennings 00:30:48 Oh, right. Well, I’ll see you on New Zealand and I’ll raise you a Thailand and that’s, trust me, around the bend. So yeah, that’s where I feel most aware of it.

Paul Keers 00:30:59 I think the one in the UK that is closest to wine now, and this has happened in the last five years or so is coffee, you know people. Oh they go on and on and on about, you know, where the beans are from and how they grind and what temperature it should be and all this kind of thing.

Charles Jennings 00:31:17 Who are these people?

Paul Keers 00:31:18 People, people. It’s the latest thing, is how to have black coffee. And it’s not an Americano, which is where you take your black coffee and you put the hot water in. No, now you’ve got to put the hot water in the cup and then put the black coffee into that. And this is the finest way of drinking black, you think? Come on. You know really.

Charles Jennings 00:31:38 Well you could have.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:39 A sister blog to sediment called grounds or something.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:41 I don’t know, but it sounds like you wouldn’t want.

Charles Jennings 00:31:43 To make it.

Charles Jennings 00:31:44 Worse. Yeah.

Charles Jennings 00:31:45 No, no. Okay. Paul.

Charles Jennings 00:31:47 Paul does live. Paul lives a more exclusive and refined life than I do. So he really, actually does worry about which order you put things in a cup. and Paul actually has bottles of wine in a kind of little tiny cellar under the stairs and all that. So. And he wears fancy trousers with labels on So.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:08 And jackets button just so.

Paul Keers 00:32:11 Absolutely.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:13 What’s the most pretentious wine moment or action or phrase or anything you’ve ever heard, witnessed, witnessed or committed yourselves?

Charles Jennings 00:32:22 Because I don’t move in Paul’s world in that way. I don’t get exposed to it. But the only one I could think of was actually just the other week. And it was around here. It was there in our house, and I did it, I did it, and somebody brought a fancy bottle. It was a red Bordeaux at 2005. Had a fancy label. I don’t know what it was.

Charles Jennings 00:32:40 It was owned. So we opened it up and I’m not sure quite sure whether it was the best I’ve ever drunk. And I actually found myself saying grippy tannins and you know, you think, oh.

Charles Jennings 00:32:52 God, do you look to get.

Charles Jennings 00:32:55 Grippy tannins. So that’s my that’s my.

Charles Jennings 00:32:58 It’s good to.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:58 Get.

Charles Jennings 00:32:59 That.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:59 Out.

Charles Jennings 00:32:59 Yeah.

Charles Jennings 00:33:00 Paul has got so many pretentious wine moments.

Paul Keers 00:33:02 He’s I probably wouldn’t recognize them as such because I sort of, you know, I quite enjoy them, don’t I? So,

Charles Jennings 00:33:10 Yeah, quite enjoy them. Yeah.

Charles Jennings 00:33:12 Okay. So it’s just a way of life. Yes.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:15 Okay. Charles, you described one wine as I’m going to quote you here from your book. It’s wonderful as turning into a black currant kind of sluicing, narrowly covering the roof of the mouth, followed by a hot gas blast in the back of the throat, an impression of plastic adhesive ending with a flourish of underarm deodorant spreading down towards the lungs. Not great, but not something you could feel indifferent towards either.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:41 And another I have to quote you one more time here, as wine’s spreading as rapidly across the floor of the mouth like a CO2 fire extinguisher, leaving only a chesty rasp in its wake. Now, how did you develop your distinctive vocabulary for describing wines, and do you ever get pushback on it?

Charles Jennings 00:33:59 Yeah, it was that was that five years I did in jail really, that really.

Charles Jennings 00:34:03 Really, really good education, Yeah.

Charles Jennings 00:34:06 I can’t remember. I can’t imagine what I was writing about or where I got that from. But it sounds revolting and entirely plausible.

Natalie MacLean 00:34:16 Yes it does. I think I’ve had that wine.

Charles Jennings 00:34:19 That’s for people. Kind of. Well, like Paul was saying I don’t. Nobody ever read us.

Natalie MacLean 00:34:24 So not much pushback.

Charles Jennings 00:34:26 You know nobody ever read us full stop. Nobody’s ever read us to to to to find out about, you know, what was what was best and what was the most refined and most sophisticated. So I don’t remember anybody. People tended to join in rather than push back on us.

Charles Jennings 00:34:42 I mean, I was just going about some Scotch whisky that we had in Egypt. It was Egyptian Scotch whisky. So it really Scotch, but it came in a thing that looked a bit like a Scotch bottle, and it was very alcoholic. And some guy wrote in and he said his dad used to drink it when he was out there in the Middle East, you know, during the war or something like that. So that was great. So no, I don’t remember being ticked off or held up to account or anything.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:10 And Paul, did you, go to wine writing school or anything? How did you develop your vocabulary?

Paul Keers 00:35:16 What we did was to draw our descriptions from our real life. I think there’s a tendency in wine writing to use metaphors that have been learnt along with the education. And, you know, sometimes they’re things that you wouldn’t necessarily experience. I mean, I’ve got a cat, but I really wouldn’t use the term cats P in describing any wine. I don’t know what cat’s pee actually tastes like, so why would I say, oh, elements of cats pee in this and yet so many wine writers do.

Paul Keers 00:35:52 Whereas if I talk about it smells of ink, well, people know what ink smells like, and it seemed more appropriate to use ink as an analogy than cats pee. Not probably for the same wine, but. And I think nearly all our metaphors were drawn from everyday life rather than from wine education, if you like, because we didn’t have a wine education.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:16 Very evocative. Now I forget which one of you, but you write about when wines are described as pluggable or suitable for quaffing. You don’t like that. What descriptors do you find that make you cringe? Other ones. Any others?

Paul Keers 00:36:32 Yeah, that was me. And it was really widespread across wine writers when they were talking about wines and they’d keep on. Oh, it’s a quaffing wine. And well, sorry, I wouldn’t say to my guests, quaff this or glug that. It just sounds horrible. The other one, which, you know, I really couldn’t get with, was easy drinking. I thought, well, wine is meant to be easy to drink.

Paul Keers 00:36:57 If it’s hard to drink, there’s something wrong with the wine. Or you. You need a doctor, not a wine critic. why would people say easy drinking?

Natalie MacLean 00:37:06 Yeah, well, the current term is sessionable. So I guess you could invite your dinner guests to have a session with a wine.

Charles Jennings 00:37:13 Session means getting drunk, doesn’t it?

Paul Keers 00:37:15 It does overhear a session?

Natalie MacLean 00:37:19 Yeah.

Charles Jennings 00:37:19 Sessionable.

Natalie MacLean 00:37:20 It’s it’s down in, like, one session of drinking anyway. It’s just. I find that bizarre.

Charles Jennings 00:37:27 I can’t stand it. I mean, everybody talks about notes of, you know, and then there’ll be a list of things that you may or may well be like Paul was saying about cats, and it’ll be kind of juniper and tobacco and vanilla and any other thing that you can think of that sounds vaguely sort of fragrant or not. And I never get that. There’s actually, it seems there’s quite a small word store for wine writing, lots of criticisms of the same thing, but you’re always having to just reshuffle the same words to try and create some sort of nuance, and I’m not sure.

Charles Jennings 00:37:57 I don’t know where it gets you. In the end, it all seems terribly familiar, even if it’s new.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:02 Absolutely. Is there anything that’s changed about wine criticism or writing since you’ve published your book that you’ve noticed any major changes?

Charles Jennings 00:38:10 I never read anything these days, so you tell me. But I mean the rise and rise of the amateur critic. You know, everybody’s a critic these days, and everybody’s got an opinion. Everybody posts their opinions everywhere. I would guess that must have some effect on that if you’re serious about it, if that’s what you do for a living, or what effect does this tide of sentiment, you know, opinion? What what effect does that have on the way you project yourself? Were you perceived? Anyway, that’s what I was getting.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:42 I mean I know the two of you really don’t probably read lots of wine books or wine columns, but do you see any trends in where wine writing is going, or have you noticed anything on the odd thing you do look at?

Paul Keers 00:38:56 Most of the wine writing that I look at is guidance for purchase.

Paul Keers 00:39:01 So it will be sort of newspaper type columns where they’ve got, you know, six wines for under a tenner or something like that. That has stayed pretty much the same because the audience has stayed pretty much the same. I think probably those sort of influences, as it were, are out there. But we’re a bit old for that, really. We’re we’re analog people rather than digital people. And the joy of writing, as it were, in print, it means a great deal. And I like that analog approach rather than the digital kind of approach, I think.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:42 Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Charles and Paul. Here are my takeaways. Number one, how does using everyday metaphors make wine writing more relatable? Charles and Paul explained that they draw their descriptions from real life. There’s a tendency in wine writing to use metaphors that you necessarily wouldn’t experience. As they say, I’ve got a cat, but I really wouldn’t use the term cat’s pee in describing any wine.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:09 I don’t know what it tastes like. Whereas if I talk about wine smelling of ink, well, people usually know what ink smells like, and it just seems to be a more appropriate use as an analogy. Number two has the pressure to be an expert in everything. Turn simple pleasures into social competition. The authors say that everybody has to be a bit of an expert these days about everything. It can’t just eat food. You have to know so much more and hold so many opinions on food. The one where it really gets them is travel and tourism. It’s not just a question of, oh, we’ve been to France, we’ve gone to Italy or something like that. It’s how you did it, where you stayed, what you did, what tours you went on. As they say, it’s so full of itself, then it becomes a transaction when you’re talking with friends. Well, I’ll trade you a trip to Singapore for a trip to New Zealand or something like that. All right, I see your New Zealand.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:04 I’ll raise you at Thailand. I have to agree with them. And number three, does buying your own wine versus getting free samples make you a better wine writer? As Charles and Paul observe. They say the fact that they bought their own wine was quite fundamental and made a difference between sediment, their blog, and other wine writing. They felt they spent their own money and felt they had a different perspective on wine versus paying for it. They hoped it put us in connection with our more of our readers. They had to do the same thing. Go out and buy it. And that gave us a different slant on the wine. Now I agree with them. If wine writing is your hobby, which it was for them. As a wine writer who does this full time, I used to believe that I should not take any free samples, and it didn’t make me a better wine writer. It made me a bankrupt one. The samples are just too expensive. Unless you’re just going to evaluate, you know, two buck Chuck.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:04 You’ll never make any money. Especially even back in the day. Newspaper columns paid maximum $300, $400, and those fees haven’t gone up. So in any case, I think there is a difference between hobbyists and those who do it full time. That’s just my personal take, but for them, it was the right thing to do. In the show notes, you’ll find a full transcript of my conversation with Paul and Charles, links to their website, and book the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online no matter where you live. If you missed episode 139, go back and take a listen. I chat about wine scores, pairing and writing with Master of Wine Vanessa Conlon. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite. Give them something. They understand a score because we know that. And at first I resisted. But then I came over to his way of thinking. Because that’s the way I feel I can be of greatest service.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:02 And that’s why I score wines in addition to those, I hope. Elegant extra tasting notes.

Charles Jennings 00:43:07 How would.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:07 You recommend someone.

Vanessa Conlin 00:43:08 Is trying to figure out which critic to align with, or who to listen to? How should a consumer make that decision?

Charles Jennings 00:43:16 I think it’s.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:17 Finding someone whose palate lines up with yours. Also, someone who can guide you a little bit further, take you out of your comfort zone. I think it comes down to palate taste, but it can also be a preference for personality. Like the way they write about wine or they make it interesting or fun. There’s just so much out there these days with the internet and social media and videos and everything else. I think there’s a critic for everyone. These days, everyone is a critic, but there’s so many ways to be guided. I think that’s an easy choice these days. You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Charles and Paul. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell one friend about the podcast this week, especially someone you know who’d be interested in learning more about wine tasting and learning how to describe wine.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:09 It’s easy to find the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, their favorite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website at Natalie MacLean. Podcast. Email me if you have a SIP tip question, or if you’d like to win one of seven copies of the books we have to give away. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this episode, or if you’ve read my book or are listening to it. Email me at Nathalie at Natalie MacLean. Com in the show notes, you’ll also find a link to take a free online food and wine pairing class with me, called the five Wine and food pairing mistakes that can ruin your dinner and how to fix them forever and Natalie MacLean class. And that’s all in the show. Notes at Natalie MacLean 340. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps an inky wine without a.

Charles Jennings 00:45:09 Whiff of Gatsby?

Natalie MacLean 00:45:17 You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:26 So subscribe for free now at Natalie MacLean. Com forward slash meet me here next week.

Charles Jennings 00:45:34 Cheers.

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