Recently, I have been watching YouTube videos of certain leading stand ups and admiring the artful way they construct their apparently artless routines. Even (and perhaps especially) the improvisations are part of the dynamic.
Bringing your audience on the journey is an integral part of oratory. The tamada, the host presiding over the Georgian supra (banquet) has to be able to mix sentiment with intellect, develop an idea or conceit much in the way that the metaphysical poets of the 16th and 17th centuries were able to, and play on the hearts and minds of the listeners as if they were instruments.
When talking about wine to a group of people, one has to be conscious of one’s entire audience and, as the saying goes, reach all corners of the room. At wine dinners, for example, assume that the average listener has zero knowledge of wine. And perhaps less interest. That they are primarily present to tuck into the food. To bring this individual on side, you will need to avail yourself of various rhetorical tricks and tropes, whilst conveying the impression that what you are saying has genuine value. Ideally, every individual should feel as if they are taking away something important from the event, a shiny nugget of information or wine wisdom.
People who know me would not say that I am preternaturally shy. I am. Secondly, I loathe the sound of my voice and became very self-conscious when I am in its vicinity! When I hear myself talking, I think who is this pompous idiot? What does he know? Why is he droning on? And easily imagine others thinking the same.
The first wine dinner I was ever invited to sing for their supper was at a restaurant in Chiswick, wherein I had stand up during the course of the meal and present seven wines that had been paired to a various fish and vegetable dishes. To prep for the forthcoming ordeal, I wrote some technical notes about each wine that I could refer to in case of emergency.
Every individual should feel as if they are taking away something important from the event, a shiny nugget of information or wine wisdom.
As the first wine was being poured, I raised myself to address the sixty or so diners who were distributed around various-sized tables in a large awkward room (with impeding pillars). I was focusing on projecting my voice to reach every nook and cranny and rapidly began to lose track of my train of thought. In fact, I suddenly became mired in mid-sentence, like someone trying to traverse quicksand in a thick fog. For five eternal seconds I was silent as I tried to find words, any words. My head was boiled beetroot. Eventually, I mumbled my way to the end of the sentence.
Despite this torture, I felt I should throw myself into situations that forced me to confront my timidity. A presentation of the Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte at Vinopolis was one such opportunity. The audience was around 150. It was testing (not only hiding my lack of knowledge of the champagnes in question) but to speak to a room that was so wide. I had to start sentences facing one side and finish them facing the other, half bounding along as I spoke. Perhaps, my ignorance was protected in that no-one could hear one entire sentence. I didn’t take questions; no point in risking everything.
The more wine dinners and tastings I hosted, the more I began to appreciate the value of winging it, by relying purely on native wit combined with an ability to conjure anecdotes and bring everything back to basics. The secret is to make a little learning go a long way and to paint evocative verbal pictures. Wine, after all, is made by a special person in a particular place and bringing that alive makes what you’re tasting seem that much more real.
Eventually, I found a formula that worked. Create a title for the tasting talk and refer back to that regularly. Riff within the structure with occasional tangents. Periodically, inject some passion into the proceedings as a change of pace. At one tasting presentation I did for a wine shop on the south coast everything came together, there was a rhythm that allowed me to interweave themes, punctuate with jokes and eventually culminated in a peroration which evoked a spontaneous ovation. It was a fluke; on a different day (even with the same people) you wouldn’t get that kind of response, but I felt that I had cultivate an affable and effusive wine persona.
For five eternal seconds I was silent as I tried to find words, any words. My head was boiled beetroot. Eventually, I mumbled my way to the end of the sentence.
This much I know – always give a talk whilst suffering from mild jet lag, the equivalent state of gentle inebriation that allows your words to float away from you like balloons.
This observation stems from a natural wine event I spoke at in a shop in Cape Town, where I had bad jetlag and underwent an outer body experience during a forty-minute peroration. I felt a strange euphoria, that my body and spirit had been replaced by that of a charismatic genius!
I was there to pour and chat about the wines and give a short speech to help to break down barriers surrounding (what is perceived as) a contentious subject. You would like to believe that the truth of these matters is pure and simple. Alas, semantics, personal taste and critical posturing impede clear understanding. Plainly, some are exercised by the very notion of natural wine and find it a fundamentally alien concept. An unnatural one, in fact. We can ignore this or try to educate people to open their minds at the very least and not to accept some of the wilder generalisations one reads about the growers, their wines and even the people who drink the wines. The wines are not a secret; they may or may not have a reputation, but ultimately they are exposed in the court of public opinion. People will drink them, or they won’t.
All discourse should, one hopes, be informed by the spirit of generosity. Wine, after all, is a subject that should bring folks together, not leave a bitter taste in their mouths. Show the love and welcome them into your world rather than present the binary-opposition universe of false dichotomies, wrongs and inalienable truths. None of us have all the answers, albeit that some people might proffer rigid professional opinions that suggest that they do. I like to drink what I like to drink; you like to drink what you like to drink; somewhere in the middle are the wines that we would be happy to share a bottle of with each other. That’s as it should be; wine as a social lubricant, making people happy, the inclusive rather than the excluded middle.
Remind your audience that you are all on a journey – each journey is relative to who you are, where you start, how far you wish to go, and whom you are influenced by. Your opinions about wine will change as you yourself change. Wines transform. Tastes change. Theories evolve. Wine is not a theory, though, it is an actuality. It is a drink that has been painstakingly crafted, shaped by innumerable decisions in the vineyard and the winery. We need to bear these processes in mind before we pass glib judgement.
Either my audience was enraptured or completely unconscious. I wasn’t remotely aware of them. I managed to talk and cover everything I wanted to say, before melting into the night.
Always give a talk whilst suffering from mild jet lag, the equivalent state of gentle inebriation that allows your words to float away from you like balloons.
Another semi-delirious occasion occurred in a picturesque village pub in Dedham, Essex, where I needed to arise from my sick bed as a favour, and do battle against a largely cynical crowd who were predisposed to dislike natural wine. I could discern that every wine on the night was disliked in varying degrees by the diners with the implicit accusation that I was some kind of hoodwinker-in-chief, namely a phoney apologist or huckster for a group of wines that should never dignify a table nor require the necessity for a corkscrew.
It is arguably relaxing to tell stories and confound assumptions, when you are preaching to an audience that is 100% secure in its own prejudices. I felt like a puckish young punk with nothing to lose. A queasy one at that. I recalled a wine educator once telling me during a natural wine masterclass that I was giving, that he (and others like him) were too old to change their opinions. At least we know where we all stand. I felt that I had made more than a decent case for the wines, and had, in oratorical terms, left everything on the field. It would be a beautiful thing if everyone was open-minded, and while tasting wines, listened to explanations as to their whys and wherefores.
Each positive wine event becomes a stepping stone in terms of one’s confidence in communicating about wine. Gradually, you’re willing to take on any challenge. At Cork Film Festival, I gave a talk introducing Jonathan Nossiter’s movie Natural Resistance. A microphone was shoved into my hand, and I was invited to speak for as long as I felt necessary. In the land of the blarney stone I was loquacious to a fault, and a shepherd’s crook needed to be deployed to hoick me off stage.
Sometimes the subject matter itself provides the inspiration. A few years ago, I was asked to give a talk on orange wine to lawyers at The Temple. The topic is such a good jumping-off point as one can easily bring in other disciplines such as art, music and philosophy into the conversation. The baffled looks on the lawyers’ faces was priceless. I was just the wine guy; how could I weave these disparate strands into a coherent thesis? When you are surrounded by intellectually curious people, you instinctively raise your talk-game, and it helps to remember that wine in the bottle is the sum of so much more than microbiological and chemical transformation. Appreciating that fact has allowed me to be more expansive when discussing the subject of wine.
Rapture is not inevitable. The flipside of the above is the determinedly sterile room, with the audience chattering amongst themselves or sitting in deathly silence. Without doubt, my worst experience was a tasting I did for the FSA in their Docklands skyscraper. I chose the theme “spring into summer”, a tasting of fresh vintage and aromatic wines predicated on the changing seasons. I liked the idea and had selected some very nice wines to illustrate it.
Seventy-plus bored-looking and slightly resentful people sat looking at me. Each of them had paper plates with filled with crackers and cheese balanced on their knees, to accompany the wines. The wines were poured excruciatingly slowly, by which time I had already launched into my spiel. I gave it my all, riffing, punning and joking, but eventually ran out of things to say. Whereupon, loud silence, punctuated by the sound of crackers being remorselessly munched. And after each wine, the same ritual cracker-crunching and so on, and so on to the point of eliciting a misophonic reaction from me. I gazed at the blank, expressionless, proactively uncaring faces. After the final wine was poured and the final cracker crumbs digested, I asked the assembled munchitude whether they had any questions about the wines they had tasted – or about wine in general. After a brief silence, up piped a solitary voice: “Any of the wines we had tonight have blood products in them?”
In the land of the blarney stone I was loquacious to a fault, and a shepherd’s crook needed to be deployed to hoick me off stage.
Radio is anathema to me. As per Dr Johnson I am one who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out and restrictive formats send me into a tailspin. I was once invited on to a Radio 4 cultural philosophy programme called Room for Improvement. Although the idea of having my words pored over by an audience of hundreds of thousands was mildly intimidating, it was less so than the time constraints and the necessity of saying my piece(s) in a single take. I knew my subject and was brimming with ideas had we time to expound, but the tenor of programme insisting that one speak in pithy sentences with urbane wit was completely alien to me. It was as if I had been invited to perform a dance without knowing a single one of the steps. Reader, I babbled, whilst the resident panellists performed their smooth pattered solos with brio.
A podcast normally allows one to be more oneself. Although the most professional ones are finely edited and could be double as radio programmes, Just Another Wine Podcast (with Jamie Goode and Emily Harman) is a celebration of friends talking about wine. We are seated around the dining room table, but we could equally be down the pub or in a wine bar. Wine is open and in our glasses and being drunk. We can digress, ask each other questions, pause, laugh, interrupt, have real conversations without feeling that we are carving our opinions into marble for eternity. The tone will range from geeky to argumentative to speculative to playful. We’re three people who enjoy each other’s company, love wine, and love talking about wine.
You can listen to the new ‘cast on all platforms!