Vino

Initially I thought this was by Hamish Henderson, the famed Scottish folklorist, the man who wrote ‘Farewell to Sicily’ and ‘The D-Day Dodgers’, two classics of the folk song revival!

Anyway, it isn’t. Hamish ANDerson is the sommelier at The Tate Gallery – now renamed in Blairite fashion “Tate Britain”, Tate Modern and allied enterprises. The Tate always had a fabulous wine cellar anyhow, with great wines at knockdown prices – lets hope things won’t change under the sexed-up new regime.

Vino is sub-titled “Great wine for everyday life”, a bit of a bold claim and I’m not sure the book lives up to it. What it does do, and does well, is to take you through the world’s wine regions, then through the grape varieties and conclude with a treatise on wine and food. It could well have been published as three smaller books, making a one volume Vino good value at GB£20 for the full bifta.

The routine information, compiled in an extremely accessible manner, is spiced up with Anderson’s own perceived wisdom and mots sages – “the wines of Bandol are highly individual and as far from marketed, bland, big-brand wine as you can get”; “”a grape that does a lot of good work but never gets the blood pumping (Pinot Blanc)”, altogether some really good wrinkles.

There’s some fine photography but where this book really scores is the layout – there’s a lot of thought been put into making it accessible.

Vino is aimed at the novice wine drinker who wants to increase his/her knowledge rather than at the wine buff and in this aspect it really succeeds, when it comes to bridging the gap between Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Book and Jancis Robinson’s marvellous Oxford Companion to Wine, Vino really hits the spot. Even the vinously literate will find it useful as a refernce work.

Vino, by Hamish Anderson. Century. GB£20