Wine News

Britain's bestselling wine writer Hugh Johnson has accused Jilly Goolden and Oz Clarke, of "attracting ridicule" to the beloved subject of his expertise. Johnson, whose annual Pocket Wine Book sells millions, said that his colleagues often sound as if they are talking about fruit salad rather than describing bottles of wine. "Jilly and Oz are wonderfully entertaining," Johnson, president of the 243-member Circle of Wine Writers, told an audience at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. He said that there was no harm in that, but that it did attract a degree of ridicule.

"I don't really want my favourite subject to be ridiculed. There is a problem when these people list all these flavours and aromas they think they have detected. It then gets on to the label of the bottle and what you are looking at appears to be a recipe for fruit salad." He added: "That is not what a wine is like. It is not appley or blackcurranty. People don't sniff a rose and say, `Oh yes, pineapple, cucumber'. It smells like a rose — and a bottle of wine smells like wine. Too much of this borrowing of terms to describe wines really doesn't help."