The lighter side of wine

By David Shaw

Dec. 17, 2003 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

This is the time of year when wine columnists generally tell their readers which books to buy for the wine lovers on their Christmas lists. The books are usually either of the coffee table variety -- big and beautiful, filled with glorious vineyard photos and anecdotal vineyard histories -- or guides that tell you which wines to buy, how to choose and find them and what foods to serve with them.

Feh! I say.

Scientific research at several universities has clearly shown that no one has ever actually read any coffee table book on any subject -- and besides, I don’t want a wine book that weighs more than a wine bottle (a full wine bottle, of course).

As for the practical wine guides, well, the best way to learn about wine -- and to appreciate wine -- is to drink wine. Try different wines with different foods and you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll come to realize which wines and which combinations you like (or not).

Of course, I’ve been opposed to practical presents of any kind, for any occasion, ever since my father bought my mother a small kitchen appliance for her birthday when I was about 10, and I saw the look of disappointment on her face.

So the two books I’m going to recommend are just great fun. And as someone who likes his wine, even white wine, with a little bottle age, I’m delighted to find myself praising two recently reissued books that also happen to have some age on them.

“The Official Guide to Wine Snobbery” (Barricade Books, 160 pages; $17.50) was originally published in 1982. “Mon Docteur le Vin” (Yale University Press, 45 pages; $19.95) was originally published in 1936.

Yes, that’s right -- 1936. And while 1936 wasn’t nearly as good a vintage as 1982, “Mon Docteur le Vin” is both the older and the better book.

First published in French, it was the brainchild of Etienne Nicolas, a Paris wine merchant who wanted to promote sales in his stores by presenting wine as “something healthy and natural and at the same time cultured and refined.” The slim volume contains 20 vivid, witty watercolors by Raoul Dufy, the renowned painter and designer, illustrating the foibles and festivities of upper-middle-class Parisian society.

The illustrations have equally witty captions to complement Gaston Derys’ text and a splendid (and splendidly brief) introduction by Paul Lukacs, a wine scholar and the author of a good wine book, “American Vintage: The Rise of American Wine.”

But what makes “Mon Docteur le Vin” so entertaining is that it is essentially a humorous commentary on the pleasures and -- above all, even if sometimes facetiously -- the purported health benefits of wine.

This book was written, remember, more than 50 years before “60 Minutes” reported the so-called “French paradox,” the discovery that the consumption of red wine helps explain why the French have far fewer heart attacks than do Americans, despite smoking more, exercising less and eating a fattier diet.

My favorite “claim” in the book comes from a Dr. H. Gahlinger, who said women suffer from urinary colibacillosis (a bacterial infection) more often than men because women generally drink less wine. As proof, he cited a case in which a woman with that malady was to be treated by having one of her kidneys removed. To amuse and distract her before surgery, “her friends invited her to a series of gourmet dinners, which of course included good wines, “ Gahlinger said. “As a result, the patient was cured and surgery avoided.”

Indeed, wine is said in this often tongue-in-chic book to stimulate childhood growth, enhance muscle strength, sharpen judgment, improve athletic, artistic and military performance and maintain youth and beauty -- and to be effective in the prevention and treatment of appendicitis, depression, obesity, chronic fatigue, acne, anemia, diabetes, eczema, gout, typhoid fever, migraine headaches, cholera, kidney and liver disease, scurvy ... and hypochondria.

You think I’m kidding, right? Well, how about this from a man identified only as “Raymond Brunet”:

“It has been scientifically proven that wine kills the bacterium that causes typhoid fever in a matter of minutes. If you drink Chablis with your oysters, you will never get typhoid fever. All doctors agree on this....”

Or this, from a Dr. Gagey: “Appendicitis has become considerably more common since the phylloxera crisis, which resulted in the adulteration of wine and increased the habit of water drinking.”

And then -- ah ha! -- this, from a Dr. Bouchard, reporting on research by Dr. Gagey, who had “studied the case of a family of 16, including five siblings with children who lived separately. During a period of four years, six of them underwent surgery for appendicitis. These six people were precisely those in the family who drank only water.”

I don’t know if “Mon Docteur le Vin” had the desired effect of increasing sales at Nicolas wine stores the way disclosure of the “French paradox” increased wine sales here. (In the first six months after the “60 Minutes” broadcast, supermarket sales of red wine -- which had been flat for several years -- increased 46% over the same period the previous year.) But the appearance of the book did coincide with a growth in the consumption of wine in general -- and fine wines in particular -- among the French.

Fine wines -- and the pretentious consumption thereof -- lie at the heart of my other favorite holiday wine book this year, “The Official Guide to Wine Snobbery.” Author Leonard S. Bernstein gently ridicules the rituals of many in the wine world -- decanting (unnecessarily), letting wine breathe (prematurely or inadequately), buying wines with big-name labels (even when they’re bad wines), sending back wines with big-name labels in a restaurant (even when they’re perfectly good wines), memorizing and reciting 50 years’ worth of Bordeaux vintages (who cares), memorizing and reciting rainfall patterns in particular Bordeaux vintages (get a life).

Bernstein also pokes fun at the basic language of wine tasting -- “balance,” “bouquet,” “nose,” “finish,” “structure,” “complexity,” “finesse,” “breed” and the like.

“You are sure to be regarded as a first-class wine snob if you discern the aroma of violets in a red wine,” he says. “Naturally you make much of this, exhibiting considerable excitement and, of course, conviction. Conviction above all else; after all, who can contradict you? The best they can say is that they do not detect the aroma of violets, at which time it will be apparent that their experience is limited and they will feel appropriately humiliated.”

Bernstein is especially amusing on the subject of various wine and food societies, many with names as long as a German wine. People who belong to these societies like to impress other wine lovers by dropping a mention of their exclusive membership into casual conversation, but as Bernstein says, “It’s impossible to hold the attention of an indifferent audience when an otherwise fast-moving wine story is constantly interrupted with references to La Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin.”

Still, he says, it’s hard to beat the thrill of being able to respond to a friend’s invitation to a movie with, “But the Chaine des Rotisseurs is having a vertical tasting of Chateau Petrus tonight.”

In a single sentence, Bernstein says, “you have bombarded [your friend] ... with the Chaine, Chateau Petrus and the concept of a vertical tasting -- three icons in the religion of wine snobbery.”

Unfortunately, snobbism seems to be about the only human frailty that even the doctors quoted in “Mon Docteur le Vin” don’t say wine can cure.

David Shaw can be reached at [email protected].