Interview: Wine Spectator’s Matt Kramer

Matt Kramer is an American wine critic writing great stories for Wine Spectator in America using his subtle wit and guile to entertain people with his thoughts on wine, something he has been doing since 1976 when he first got thrown in at the deep end by his then employer, a weekly publication for which he wrote about food.

Since then, Matt has gone on to pen eight books and has written for most, if not all the influential wine publications in America and whilst he was in Hong Kong last week, Wine Times took the opportunity to interview the man whom we here have been reading for years.

His books include his insights into the regions of California wine, Italian wine and Burgundian wine, whilst his others are a general look at wine with titles such as “Making Sense of Wine” and his most recent publication “Matt Kramer on Wine: A Matchless Collection of Columns, Essays and Observations by America’s Most Original and Lucid Wine Writer”.

Talking to Matt prior to having dinner with the man himself and Louis Jadot owner Pierre-Henry Gagey at Hullett House here in Hong Kong, we wanted to know what inspired him to get into wine writing and what the fundamental role of today’s wine critic really is.

WTHK: How did you first get into wine writing?

MK: “Actually I began as a food writer 36 years ago and I had come back from a 3 month bicycling trip around Europe to start my new job as a food editor of a small newspaper. The publisher of the newspaper said ‘what do you know about wine’? I told him I knew nothing about wine other than it comes in red, white and pink! He then told me that while I was away they had done a mock-up of the new food page and to fill up space we put in something called “Wine of The Week”. Then he told me “you’re writing it”! I then told him ‘but I don’t know anything about wine’, to which he replied ‘that’s ok, neither does anyone else’! That’s really how I started writing about wine. I started writing about wine the exact same week I started drinking wine”!

WTHK: Can you remember the first wine you ever tried?

MK: “That I ever drank? The first wine I ever drank would have been something stupid like Lancers Rosé and when we were cycling in France we were young and poor so all we would buy would be wine from the grocery stores that were sold by the alcohol level. We drank a lot of douze degree that was probably only 3 or 4 Francs per litre! But in terms of fine wine, I remember the first wine I wrote about which was Drouhin Beaujolais Villages – which wasn’t a bad choice”!

WTHK: Do you have a “go to” wine?

MK: “No! There’s too many. We live in a remarkable time period and if you’ve been doing what I’ve been doing for 36 years you do get a certain perspective and its one that I really marvel at. There are now more incredibly fine wines from more places than really could have ever been imagined even 20 years ago. The challenge for people like ourselves is, frankly, to persuade people that greatness – true greatness – now appears in many places that have not been sanctified by time or tradition. There was a wine that was one of my wines of the year in my column for the Spectator and it was from a zone in Northwestern Spain called Ribera Sacra and this wine is fabulous, it is Burgundy in everything except grape variety and location. But it comes from this amazing soil, but the whole zone had been founded by Benedictine and Cistercian monks 700 years ago. When you taste this wine you say “this is incredible”, but it’s difficult to convince people that genuine, authentic greatness now is appearing in places that simply do not have the tradition of people having read about it like they do with Bordeaux and Burgundy”.

WTHK: You have written eight books – any chance you’ll do more?

MK: “Nothing on the horizon but the publishing market is not in the best of health at the moment and I’m not going to say there aren’t books in me, but whether those books get published remains to be seen. It’s a question of economics really”.

WTHK: The title of your latest book is “A Matchless Collection of Columns, Essays and Observations by America’s Most Original and Lucid Wine Writer”. Did you name the book yourself?

MK: “My agent did! It was immodest on my behalf and I was gracious enough to allow him to suggest the title!! Was I responsible, no! But I didn’t exactly say “no, no, no”! I figured if they wanted to say that I wasn’t going to object”.

WTHK: What would you say the role of today’s wine critic really is?

MK: “I think the role of any critic be it wine or movies or theatre occupies several levels. At one level, it is to entertain. If you can’t write entertainingly, no one will finish reading what you started. So, as a writer you have a responsibility to entertain. There are different kinds of critics and I am not what the French call a “grand degustateur” – meaning a great taster in regard to the scale of what you do. So a guy like Robert Parker or James Laube taste thousands of wines a year and write detailed tasting notes – they are ‘grand degustatuers’. My kind of wine criticism is there to enlighten people, get them to think about something they may not have thought about before and maybe even provoke them a little – as well as to entertain. So it depends on the kind of critic you want to be and the kind of critic the reader wants to read”.

WTHK: This is your first visit to Hong Kong so what do you think about the place?

MK: “That’s like asking a wine newby what he thinks of Richebourg! I’ve been here 48 hours but you look at the place and think ‘wow, you’re not in Kansas no more Toto’! It’s wonderful being here because I enjoy Chinese food so all I’ve really been doing since I got here is eating! I get up in the morning and get dim sum at 7am….this is great! I’ve hit the streets and happily here in Hong Kong everyone speaks some English so I am capable of communicating what I want”.

WTHK: Do you have any opinions on pairing food with wines?

MK: “This whole business of pairing food and wine came to us from the French. It’s something that I am not particularly immersed in but the idea of it came arbitrarily 150 years ago. If you look back at how this happened it came at two levels, one, it was simply regional. The Burgundians had their foods and they knew which of their wines went with their foods. They were not sitting there saying ‘do you think this Mourvedre from Bandol goes with the Boeuf Bourguignon’! For them, the business of wine and food pairing was that you drank your local wine with your local food. Secondly, you had a group of people in Paris for example, who would go to restaurants and drink fine wines of which there were, tops, maybe 5 dozen labels that they would drink. Out of those maybe 12 or 15 would be Cru Classe Bordeaux and there would be Grand Cru Burgundies, top quality German wines from the Rheingau or Mosel and maybe a Cote Rotie or Hermitage – but it was a narrow world, and it was an equally narrow world for the dishes they were eating. There was no fusion cuisine back then! I believe the trick is to choose a good wine, and if that good wine is even remotely appropriate for the dish or dishes in question, the wine can take care of itself. Is it the perfect paring? Who knows? But to be perfectly blunt, who cares!?”

You can read Matt Kramer’s monthly article in Wine Spectator Magazine – available from all good bookshops in Hong Kong.