What's the best way to read a book about wines, producers, regions, styles, etc? Cover-to-cover? Episodically? Grab it when you want to do some research on a specific topic? In my own case, it's typically when I crawl into bed because that's about the only time I have to read about my favorite subject.
Whatever your preference, you'll want to read this book when you're in a position to pay attention because it's one of the most entertaining and instructive wine books I've seen in a long time. Jefford is a passionate advocate for non-interventionist winemaking. If anyone else has already invented this term I apologize in advance for the unwitting plagiarism, but he's also a "terroir-ist". God help the hapless winery that allows anything to interfere with the expression of the land in the wine, or commits the cardinal sin of branding. To Jefford, quoting Randall Graham of Bonny Doon, drinking a great wine should be like "shaking hands with a mountain," because you're drinking the very land where the vines grow, not the attenuated expression of a winemaker's ego.
The New France is Jeffford's paean to French winemakers who share his perspective on quality. While I don't really regard it as a book for beginners, its greatest utility comes from snapshot reviews of hundreds of producers across the major wine growing regions of France. Jefford gives them anywhere from zero to three stars to indicate their merit based on his terroir-at-all-costs preferences. So if your tastes agree with his, you'll find his capsule summaries of tremendous value.
A quick example might help make this a little clearer. Recently, one of my favorite stores, the Wine Library in Springfield, NJ, ran an ad for William Fevrre Chablis Fourcharme 1er Cru 1999 for what seemed like a very low price. I love white Burgundy, but I don't often buy it because the good stuff is so expensive. Thinking this sounded like a great deal, but wary of getting bushwhacked as can often happen in Burgundy, I grabbed my edition of The New France and turned to the section on Chablis (treated here like a separate and equal wine growing region, which I heartily applaud). I was gratified to learn that this producer earned Jefford's highest 3 star designation, particularly since 1998 when it changed ownership. Even more impressive, he cited this specific premier cru vineyard because it abuts the grand cru Preuses and is particularly rich as a result. Well, folks, all I can tell you is he nailed this sonufagun. I bought two cases.
What qualifies Fevre as the best domaine in Chablis according to Jefford? Meticulous attention to the picking and sorting of the fruit, low yields, minimal manipulation and very little new oak all allow the wines to speak for themselves.
The book is organized around each of the major French winegrowing regions. Each chapter features: an introduction to the terroir of each region and the impact it has on the wines; brief profiles of Jefford's favorite winemakers; a section called The Adventure of the Land in which he delves deeply into the characteristics of the various appellations within the region; a beautiful and extremely detailed color map of the AOC's; a section labeled "Flak", which deals objectively with contemporary issues and problems facing the region; and finally the profiles and ratings of the wineries themselves. His somewhat fawning portraits make it clear Jefford's idolizes the winemakers who do it right.
Of course, as is the case with any wine writer or critic, the proof is in the drinking: yours that is. Jefford loves garage wines and appears to believe that on balance the changes wrought in Bordeaux by Robert Parker over the last 20 years and the rise of the garagists in the late `90's are helping the entire region to raise its standards. I'm more of a traditionalist myself, but we're all going to have to wait another 10-20 years for the Bordeaux of the late "90's or 2000 vintages to age for us to understand who will ultimately win this debate.
Overall, I believe this is an extremely valuable book to have in your wine library. It's full of new insights, it's beautifully written and illustrated, and it will both inform and challenge your ideas of what constitutes wine quality in France and anywhere else for that matter. Andrew Jefford writes a column in Decanter, the outstanding British wine magazine, and now that I've spent time with The New France, his column is always the second thing I read each month (after Michael Broadbent's column, of course!).
