Taste has a well-noted ability to evoke memory, so it is curious how infrequently most wine writers mine their pasts for inspiration. You wouldn’t think that some had ever fallen in love, read a novel or even got drunk. Instead they obsess over scores, sulphur and diurnal temperature variation. Thank heavens for Nina Caplan, who brings a bit of hinterland to this often dry subject in her weekly New Statesman column.
Characteristically, The Wandering Vine, her first book, is about much more than wine. It’s a heady blend of travel, literature, memoir, history and what I can only describe as psychogeography, though don’t let that put you off. The publishers have given the book a whimsical cover, which is misleading, because this is not a lightweight read. Caplan has set herself a daunting task, to examine identity, belonging, the legacy of the Romans, the expulsion of Jews from Europe and her own family through the prism of wine.
She is a member of those two great wandering tribes, the Jews and the Australians, and she uses the vine, carried around the world by the Romans, as a metaphor for immigration and rootedness.
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