House and Garden magazine is ceasing operation. This would otherwise be a blip on the radar in the “another one bites the dust” graveyard of magazines were it not for Jay Mcinerney’s notable contributions as a wine writer par excellence.
The author of several critically lauded fiction books and two additional book compendiums of his wine essays—A Hedonist in the Cellar and Bacchus and Me—Mcinerney is one of the most erudite, yet accessible wine writer’s making keystrokes on a laptop today. Second, perhaps, to Matt Kramer from Wine Spectator.
As the story goes in the preface to one of his books, an editor friend asked him if he wanted to pen a monthly wine column for House and Garden and given his writerly ways and predilection for vino a match was made between he and the magazine; of course, a subscriber was made out of me, if only to read his monthly columns.
Perhaps if the magazine had a wider focus than an editorial ethos skewing towards decorating schematics utilizing $600 decorative throw pillows and $450 table lamps, it might not have met an untimely death, but I digress …
The really valuable thing about Mcinerney is he writes from the perspective of a guy that knows something about wine, but is endlessly inquisitive and not the least bit pretentious—the end result is usually a juicy essay around 800-1000 words that is brisk, informative and memorable. In a day and age where most wine writers either write for Susie Homemaker or 1% of the wine population, Mcinerney stood out by writing for the kind of people that read wine blogs—intelligent, but not too big for their wine britches. If you haven’t read his collection of essays, I would highly encourage you to pick up both of his wine books used on Amazon.com and shhhhhhh … don’t tell Mcinerney either … he gets screwed on royalties when you buy a used book … I figure its karmic payback for all of the fabulous junkets he took as a result of his wine writing sideline …
In fact, it was Mcinerney, who through his prose turned me onto Condrieu. Condrieu is a wine-growing AOC in the northern Rhône region of France, on the right bank. Coming from only some 300 acres of planted vines, a succulent and expensive Viognier is produced that is notable for its delicacy and its amazing floral aromatics.
It was the Condrieu that my wife and I enjoyed at the Sea Grill at the Rockefeller Center while in New York in October that made the dinner, not the seafood on the plate. A bit forbidding at the start and over-chilled, the wine came up to temperature and turned into a kaleidoscope of amazing flavors nuanced to a greater extent than you’ll ever see in a California white. It’s no wonder the Sea Grill is a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence winner with wines like the one I enjoyed populating its wine list.
Speaking of Wine Spectator, and having already made the Matt Kramer reference, I think it’s only fitting that Wine Spectator take a looooooong and hard look at adding to their stable of wine writers. Perhaps it’s not according to the culture of WS that a hired gun comes in to write a column—most of the wine writers have cut their teeth there for years. However, adding Mcinerney adds considerable chops to their wine writing staff and a decidedly outsider POV that would be refreshing and refreshingly engaging from a content perspective.
Put it this way—if The Wine Advocate and the Wine Spectator are the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox of the wine journalism genre, then picking up a marquee off-season free agent might be the ticket to the World Series. It takes a team to win, but sometimes the team needs the outside difference-maker. With the flak that Wine Spectator takes from such a divergent audience, adding a superstar that speaks to me and thousands of others seems like a safe bet.
What do you say Wine Spectator? A monthly column for Mcinerney nestled between Laube and Kramer? I’d love to see somebody in the three spot writing a column that would set the table for Kramer to hit clean-up!