▻ Oz Clarke
In conversation with Oz Clarke
Episode Summary:-
Oz Clarke is for millions of people the face of wine. His highly successful BBC TV programme, “Food and Drink,” which he co-hosted with Jilly Goolden, coincided with the arrival of an array of many new wines from the New World. Oz was an active and enthusiastic champion, firstly of Australian wine, then New Zealand. As he notes, “The wine in the glass was crying out with tons of flavour, tons of personality, and saying ‘my only job in life is actually to make you happier’!” His enthusiasm for the ripe flavours of the New World have led some people to believe he is actually Australian. Did his popularity skew some people’s perception of him as a wine expert, with equal knowledge of the Old and New World? “Yes,” Oz says, and reveals how the wine establishment didn’t approve of him.
As a self-confessed and outspoken wine radical, Oz has never been afraid to pull his punches, which has led him to be banned in both Champagne and Bordeaux for a time. He is a prolific author, winning all the major wine book awards, and now his book “Oz Clark on Wine,” published by Academie du Vin Library, intertwines his life story with an eloquent critical guide to the world’s wine regions and grapes – 488 pages of unadulterated Oz Clarke, as entertaining as it is informative.
In this episode of Great Wine Lives, Sarah talks to him about how he discovered flavour as a child growing up in the Kent countryside, where his parents had a smallholding, growing fruit and vegetables. Oz reminisces about the changing flavours of his childhood (“I lived the seasons with Mum.”) After life as a schoolboy chorister, he headed to Oxford University; having led an alcohol-free life until then, he joined the wine society, on the grounds that wine was one of the ways to be a sophisticate. It also provided him with a way to improve his social life, with four tastings a term at the price of 50 pence a tasting, with the added advantage of being able to invite a guest. Oz recalls his first tasting, taking a girl dressed head to food in green paint and a green sequin mini-skirt, which was not a success amidst the pinstripe suits! More of a success was his first taste of a great wine, Château Léoville Barton 1962, which he can still describe today. Smitten, he joined the Oxford Wine Tasting team and then became part of the championship English Wine Tasting team; by the time he left Oxford to go on stage, he was known as “the actor who knows about wine.”
Oz talks about how becoming an actor enabled him to travel around the world, discovering the flavours of the New World wines for the first time. While a student at Oxford University, he played Sir Toby Belch in “Twelfth Night,” directed by Patrick Garland. His performance led to interviews from the National Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company and the Bristol Old Vic, but an offer from Northampton Repertory Company for a 45-week season at £25 a week proved irresistible. Eighteen months later he had a role on a world tour of “Hedda Gabler,” with Glenda Jackson, Patrick Stewart and Timothy West. The first stop on the tour was Melbourne, and the flavours of the Australian wines thrilled him, especially as they were at prices most people could afford. “In the 1970s High Street, you couldn’t find anything affordable that made you happy.” The arrival later of Australian wine onto the shelves of British retailers led to a revolution in wine-drinking: “Penfolds Bin 28 probably taught Britain how to drink red wine,” he says. The 1980s was a time of enormous social change in Britain, and wine became classless as people no longer thought “wine is not for the likes of us.”
““I think flavour is one of the overriding attractions to being alive, and wine is part of it.””
Oz and Sarah then discuss who is influencing today’s wine drinkers. He believes there is a new generation of people in their 20s using social media, and podcasting, who are starting to make waves. Oz talks about the 100-point scale and the idea of perfect wines: “I don’t think scoring has helped the ordinary man or woman in the street drink wine at all,” he says. “It makes people copy successful wine, rather than what wine should be.” They discuss his love of Bordeaux varieties and he issues a challenge: “I think Burgundy is suffering from Pinot obsession,” adding that he believes that Pinot Noir is not as complex and brilliant as people say it is. However, modern Bordeaux, also comes in for criticism, with some wine producers these days making wines by rote, to an algorithm.
Climate change is also a topic that Oz has been talking about since the early 1990s. He tells Sarah about a tasting at the Wine Spectator magazine’s New York Wine Experience when he gave a speech warning about climate change, and people walked out, apart from Angelo Gaja, Miguel Torres, Christian Moueix and Piero Antinori, who moved to the front row in support of him. He discusses how the alcohol level of the wines in his cellar have changed: The wines from the 1990s were 12.5% alcohol, the 2000s 13%, and now the vintages from 2015 onwards in the Medoc are often 14 to 14.5%. In Burgundy, he has recently seen alcohol levels at more than 15%.
He discusses which grapes will struggle, and says he hopes science will help find solutions. “We need to find scientists to now create slower yeasts, science can help.” He believes that global warming is going to be at its most problematic at the top end of the quality level, where the best vineyards are.
Sarah asks where he would buy a vineyard for 40-50 years’ time. His answer is the Norfolk/Suffolk border in Britain, and he explains why. Sarah’s last question is about what has given him the most satisfaction in his wine career, and he replies with the work with Jilly Goolden, and latterly James May, on television, as it made wine classless. For Oz it was always about making sure people knew “wine is for the likes of us.”
Running Order:-
-
0.00 – 19.00
“Wine was one of the ways to be a sophisticate.”
– Oz’s early childhood, his parents and not going to school until he was six.
– Growing up in Kent and discovering flavour in his family’s smallholding.
– Arriving at Oxford University and becoming a member of the wine society.
– The person who most influenced Oz – Arthur Cox, the butler at his college. -
19.01 – 28.40
“Six months with Glenda Jackson does drive you to drink.”
– Acting at Oxford University in “Twelfth Night” with Patrick Garland directing.
– Becoming an actor and not wanting a proper job.
– Going to Australia on a world tour of “Hedda Gabler” with Glenda Jackson and discovering the flavours of Australian wine. -
28.41 – 39.20
“The wine establishment, when I started making a noise, really didn’t like what I did – I think a lot of them absolutely hated me.”
– The wine establishment’s reaction to Oz Clarke and Jilly Goolden’s TV programme.
– How Oz was banned from Bordeaux and Champagne.
– How brands like Penfolds Bin 28 and Rosemount Chardonnay revolutionised British wine drinking.
– The success of Cloudy Bay and New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
– The new generation of wine communicators. -
39.21 – 59.45
“I often think Pinot Noir is often not as complex and brilliant a grape as people say it is.”
– Oz on Pinot Noir.
– He discusses what constitutes greatness in a wine.
– Oz’s view on the 100-point system.
– Climate change and the rising alcohol levels of wine.
– Climate change and its effect on where grapes are planted.
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59.46 – 01.05
“Wine is for the likes of us and we thought it wasn’t.”
– Where Oz would plant a vineyard if given endless resources.
– Where he thinks vineyards will thrive in Britain in 20 years’ time.
– Oz reveals which part of his career has given him the most emotional satisfaction.
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