Here is a salutary tale for any of you who will soon be in France on holiday - and itching to flee the bosom of your family by about Day Four. Patrick Matthews, a former London television producer, found himself in this familiar crux in the summer of 1991. Where could he escape? A local wine producer might be a reasonable pretext for a solo excursion to sanity, he thought. It was the beginning of a new obsession and a new career. Better still, Matthews's book, The Wild Bunch: Great Wines From Small Producers, has recently won the Glenfiddich Drinks Book of the Year award.
I came across this likeable book just in time to recommend it as a Christmas present. Now that I've had time to savour it more fully , bumping in my mind's eye up obscure mountain tracks in the southern sun to uncover the talented mavericks of the wine world, it seems more like essential summer reading. A paperback to keep permanently in the car, as a guide to thrilling and bizarre impromptu journeys. Even if you never leave home at all it will still earn its keep, because The Wild Bunch doubles as a buyer's guide to the most interesting wines on offer in your local supermarket or off-licence. Matthews awards points for "oddness" as well as "niceness".
When he first started researching it, his book must have seemed as brave and pioneering an effort as the wines of many of the producers he features.
There was plenty to say and, as it turned out, it was the right time to say it. Matthews rightly sensed a weariness among wine consumers who were drinking more and becoming increasingly bored with the bland "factory" wines that flood the low-to-middle price end of the market. The Wild Bunch offers intriguing alternatives - wines mainly in the £5-10 bracket which taste distinctive. Love 'em or hate 'em, they have oodles of character: these are no wishy-washy compromises formulated to the prescription of some marketing man. Most are made by small growers and producers - strong-minded individuals obsessed with authenticity and purity rather than technology and supermarket sales muscle.
"If wines have personalities, they get them from the people who make them," Patrick Matthews writes. What is interesting is that more and more small growers are turning to winemaking themselves, rather than selling their grapes to larger companies as may have happened in the past. Their approach, typically, is low-tech, with less intervention both in the vineyard and in the winery than is usual from a mass-market producer. That probably means less use of herbicides, less use of enzymes and other additives, wild yeasts rather than dried ones and less filtration. While it would be nonsensical to categorise small producers as good guys and all the big boys as villains, it is nevertheless true that giant firms are more likely than one-man-bands to manipulate inferior wines so that they taste passable and still meet competitive price points. Free of this pressure, talented small producers make the best wines they can, following the methods they believe in. They are artisans - hand-crafters, blending tradition with intuition. Jacques Seysses, the well known force behind Domaine Dujac in Burgundy, contrasts the two approaches well when he speaks of "the difference between home cooking and cooking for hundreds of people". Above all, Matthews's wild bunch are passionate perfectionists. Paddy Keogh of Wines Direct in Mullingar, who imports wines from half a dozen of the book's stars, believes their obsessive dedication is crucial. "These are people who, instead of playing golf during fermentation, are prepared to sleep in the chai to make sure that all goes well. Winemaking is difficult, so that's the sort of commitment you need."
So who are these individualists - and where? Masterfully, Patrick Matthews conveys the impression that they are emerging in every corner of the wine world - stepping out from lovingly-tended vineyards or determinedly-traditional cellars, with pruning shears in one hand and a bottle of something tasty in the other. California Rhone Rangers Randall Grahm and Steve Edmunds of Edmunds St John are in there, along with other top American producers such as Paul Draper of Ridge Vineyards. At the other side of the globe, praise is heaped on Robert O'Callaghan and Charlie Melton of Australia's Barossa Valley and Chateau Tahbilk, the Victoria estate famous for its Marsanne. Somewhere in between fall European producers of the old style, such as Miguel Valdespino, whose sherry bodega is the only one to continue to ferment in wooden casks rather than stainless steel tanks. Tellingly, Valdespino compares this to hanging on to his old camera, rather than using his new automatic camera all the time. "If you ferment all in one single vat you get what I get with my automatic camera. All the pictures are good but none is really outstanding."
In sharp contrast are young movers and shakers such as Telmo Rodriguez, the winemaker responsible for our
Bottle Of The Week - a forceful fellow who has come to blows with the authorities in Rioja for daring to tell Decanter magazine vast quantities of that region's wine would be better distilled for use as gasoline substitute. Part of the appeal of The Wild Bunch is that it delves with relish into the hostilities opinionated producers so readily provoke. It is a book full of guts, and sometimes blood; a chronicle punctuated as much by ruffled feathers as smooth, voluptuous mouthfuls. But its true geographical core is the south of France - the region where so many exciting, well-priced wines are now being made by a new generation of eager winemakers. Matthews admits he tracked down so many in this fertile territory that there was space only to scratch the surface of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Greece. "Maybe I'll write another book about those countries - a Wild Bunch, Mark II," he says. In the meantime, it's encouraging to discover that so many of the wines he singles out as worthwhile are already available here, from Wines Direct, of course, but also via importers such as Searsons, Brangan & Co and James Nicholson - companies which are enthusiastic about tracking down top-quality producers, however limited their output. We're lucky in Ireland that our market, though ballooning, is still small enough to enable even supermarket buyers to go hunting for modest quantities of interesting, personalitypacked wines. In Britain there's less room on the shelves for individuality. Patrick Matthews envies us that.
The Wild Bunch by Patrick Matthews is published by Faber & Faber, price £7.99 in the UK