Saintsbury on Wine: Standpoint's Connoisseur on Reading and Drinking

Most writing about wine fails to touch on the role it has played in the imaginative lives of men. Saintsbury, our pseudonymous wine columnist, has sought to remedy this in his monthly contributions to Standpoint. His short essays deal with novelists, playwrights, poets and other men of letters and the relationship between them, their writing and wine. Shakespeare, Horace, Dr Johnson, Harold Pinter, Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift and Henry James are just a few of the writers examined here.As he writes of these essays, “If they have a distinctive feature, it is to be found in their chosen angle of vision, and their conviction that, before it is an agricultural or (these days, more often) an industrial product, wine is associated with out most important human pleasures, desires, and fears.”‘Saintsbury’ has spent the last 30 years reading books and drinking wine in an Oxford college. He has recently surprised himself by acquiring an enthusiasm for Swiss wine."Witty, learned, humane, beautifully written, Saintsbury is the best writer on wine I have ever read." — Theodore Dalrymple"Learning is an excellent thing, if worn lightly, and nothing makes the wearing of it lighter than wine. The mutual support offered to each other by wine and learning form the topic of this excellent book, and no serious drinker should be without it." — Roger Scruton