Book Review
October 5, 2023
Nikita Malhotra
I agreed to meet a friend at the Strand earlier this week; he is a chef so wandering into the food/wine section upstairs was inevitable. Between dissecting the mid 1990’s obsession with Tuscan cuisine and our shock at how many vegan cookbooks were bursting from the shelves, I came across an out of print edition of Simon Loftus’ Puligny-Montrachet: Journal of a Village in Burgundy. The book was written in the early 1990’s and I was more taken aback with the recognizable Ralph Steadman font, which at first glance tricked me into thinking Hunter S. Thompson had stumbled around Puligny-Montrachet in full Gonzo mode.
A glance at the author information on the back sleeve clarified that this was indeed a book written by someone in the wine trade. And flipping through the pages I gleaned that the book was a glimpse at the village suspended in a particular time. It felt more like an anthropology book than a book about a wine region. Since retired, Simon Loftus was a British wine merchant, restaurateur and brewery chairman and has published several books during his career. I discarded the slightly depressing novel I was willing to gamble on and left the bookstore with this fun discovery.
As I had suspected, upon reading the initial pages of the book, I found a charming snapshot of the village of Puligny-Montrachet. A sleepy village and one at the precipice of change back in the early 90’s. As Loftus sketches out the lives of the inhabitants of the village, the past, present and future weave in and out. At this particular point in the history of the village there is almost a ghost town ambiance being described. The children have to venture into the enemy territory of Chassagne-Montrachet (a rivalry that is explored in depth in the book) because they had to shut down the school. There is now only one bakery in the village and the butcher travels with his wares twice a week. For the elderly these vestiges of village life are essential, but the ease of supermarkets in larger and more urban centers lures many. The next generation doesn’t seem too attached to the past - there is a reference in the book to Loftus asking after the winemaker’s family name on a very old monument in town, the man shrugs and says he doesn’t know anything about that.
I enjoyed the author’s sense of taste, he has no qualms in telling his readers that the vigneron he had just described, and taking care to note their history and struggles and joys, makes mediocre wine. It’s a good balance of narrating a person’s story and being pragmatic in matters concerning taste. You can see the juxtaposition between the writer and the wine merchant, but it works well with this type of book. I will certainly keep an eye out for more from this author and take a chance on more out of print books on a wine regions.
