Andrew Jefford - ‘Wine beauty can only be created by working hand-in-hand with nature'

Three months of pandemic induced lockdown are drawing to an end. It hasn’t been all frustration and anxiety. I’ve enjoyed being at home with the family – and the internet wine chat which has replaced the customary tastings, travel and research. Two interview questions, in particular, set me thinking.

- Andrew Jefford

‘What does it take,’ I was asked by US importer of Languedoc-Roussillon wines Carol Bailey-Medwell in an Instagram Live session, ‘to be a great winemaker?’ It begins, I suggested, with luck – the luck to be working with a distinguished site; no amount of skill can magic fine wine from mediocre grapes. But you need, too, to be a ‘site whisperer’ – to understand, through engaged intimacy, what sort of wine your vineyard would most like to produce, and to help it to do that, no matter the cost in effort.

Attention to detail is critical; that’s a part of the whispering, but it’s also emphatically the basis of craftsmanship in the winery. No gesture should go unconsidered.