List $28.98

Written & narrated by Julian Curry - 4 COMPACT DISCS - 5 hours, 15 minutes

Publisher, Naxos Audiobooks (July 2003)

Actor and wine expert Julian Curry has devised a unique audiobook guide to wine. The whole subject is introduced and explained - how wine is made, the different grapes, the different blends, vintages, wine-growing areas and types. In an entertaining and informal style, he also teaches how to taste wine, how to choose it, to keep it. Other topics such as food and wine, fortified wines, champagnes and the New World experience are also covered. An outstanding audio-original from Naxos AudioBooks!

JULIAN CURRY: WINE, THEAtrE, TV AND MORE WINE

Julian Curry, writer and narrator of A Guide to Wine tells Nicolas Soames about the joys of the stage and the vine.

Though first and foremost an actor, Julian Curry has, as long as he can remember, enjoyed wine on a more serious level than many a thirsty thespian. He talks, mistily, about the 1929 Cheval Blanc, a St Emilion, which he drank once on the most extraordinary day of tasting and drinking in his life. "It was like frayed old lace, absolutely exquisite," he muses. (More of that later).

And he is accustomed to wine and its delights weaving in and out of his performing career. He began to have a particular interest when he was at Kings College, Cambridge, doing modern languages and English. Hugh Johnson, the wine writer, was a contemporary at the same college but Julian admits to being not quite as dedicated as him. "I was happy to have a pint of Bass Charrington," he said – "though I wouldn’t kick a good wine out of bed."

The ground work was laid early when his family went to France on holiday and returned with barrels of wine – as fine quality as his father, headmaster of the famous Dartington Hall School in Devon could afford. That was in the 1950s, when wine really meant Europe, and principally France, or possibly Italy, Spain or Germany. The New World was hardly on the map. His parents’ tipple was invariably French. On High Days and Holidays it might be a Beaujolais (Fleurie if possible) for his mother and a red Burgundy (Volnay or Pommard) for his father. Julian was allowed a taste, mixed with water.

As Julian found his feet in the drama world, (in the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s mixed with other theatre and TV) wine would play its private part. But it became public in the 1970s when he was involved in one of the most famous of British TV series, Rumpole of the Bailey, written by the inimitable John Mortimer. Leo McKern created the role of the irascible uncompromising but wise barrister Rumpole, while Julian was another member of his chambers, Claude Erskine-Brown. As the series grew, Mortimer drew on the characters of the regulars and Claude Erskine-Brown’s part expanded – encompassing the traits of a sniffy wine buff.

“John came to read-throughs and filming, and talked with us and inevitably a little bit of each of us went into our parts,” said Julian. “Looking back at some of the episodes now, he must have detected a latent cork dork in me!” But Mortimer was obviously a kindred spirit. He loved fine wine. “I remember him describing one lunch with Kingsley Amis where they went through a spectacular number of fine bottles. I go pale at the thought.” Mortimer even wrote one episode called Rumpole and the Blind Tasting, bringing Julian’s interest in wine centre stage, so to speak.

And Rumpole took Julian abroad – to the Napa Valley. He was invited by the Rumpole Society of California to give a talk to its members. The following day, they took him on a tour of the Napa Valley and in particular the Mondavi Winery. His Rumpole hosts drove him down and had booked for a normal tourist wine tour when, walking around a corner, he bumped into an employee who looked up at him (Julian is a clean six foot) and exclaimed: "My Gahd. It’s Claude Erskine-Brown!" He turned out to be another Rumpole fan, but also a winemaker for Mondavi – with a small private winery of his own. The strolling player received very special treatment.

Wine has featured on many of his films and tours. Julian played Wing Commander Shurlock in Escape to Victory, a football film with an extraordinary cast including Pelé ("a lovely guy – very easy and totally unstarry") - Bobby Moore, Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone. It was filmed in Budapest and Julian remembers a great abundance of Hungarian wines and one night of ‘a villainous distillate’ which almost finished him off.

He is quite relaxed about wines of all standards. He has a cellar with a couple of hundred bottles, including some that are distinctly classy. “I love opening good wine, but not for thugs, only for folks who will actually notice what they are drinking.” Many are for everyday, but others are for the future. “I have a few selected wooden boxes which will slumber on for a few years yet,” he advises. He occasionally buys ‘en primeur’ (before it is bottled) because it allows him to choose good wines at relatively inexpensive prices. For example, he bought cases of 1990 Châteaux Figeac and Léoville Barton and 1998 Haut Brion at good prices en primeur, which turned out to be very good decisions. Sometimes, he admits, the decisions prove not so wise.

And yet he regularly drinks humbler wines. He lives in a Kent farmhouse with his wife, Mary and is happy to save the drinking until the evening. "Last night we had a glass of Pouilly-Vinzelles, a white Macon which, at 1998, is slightly past its best – it is just beginning to oxidise. That’s probably why it was on offer at a £50 reduction! But you could still appreciate that it was a quality wine. I prefer a high quality wine slipping past its prime rather than a wine that will never be anything special." They then moved on to a bottle of Altano, a new style Portuguese red. "I don’t drink large quantities. Robert Parker (the famous American wine critic) is said to finish the whole bottle, so as to appreciate the way it changes over a few hours after the cork has come out. I’d tend to do that over two evenings."

Julian has, in the last few years, interspersed his acting work with wine tours. He has guided walking tours to France and Spain (Navarre and Rioja) for Winetrails. "We have gone to Bordeaux where the wine is wonderful and the walking is not so interesting; to the Pyrenees where it is the other way round; and Provence where the wine and the walking are both lovely." He also travels with his one-man wine show, Hic! or The Entire History of Wine (abridged). Since devising it in 2000, and premiering it in the US on Cape Cod, he has taken it to numerous countries, and has published it in book form. This year he takes it to the Costa Blanca Wine Society near Valencia, and also on a Swan Hellenic wine cruise across the Mediterranean and up the Atlantic coast of Portugal, Spain and France.

Increasingly, it seems, wine is coming to the forefront in Julian’s life. Earlier this year he was shooting a film (in the style of Flash Gordon, called World of Tomorrow) with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law, and the off-camera chats turned to very definitely to wine.

His decision two decades ago to study wine more formally, resulting in a Diploma, meant that he is increasingly invited to tastings. The most recent was a "very impressive" display of Austrian wines, including Grüner Veltliner at the Austrian Embassy providing information which filtered through to his new CD and tape on Naxos AudioBooks, A Guide to Wine. This experience was particularly satisfying because he could oversee and advise on the project from conception to publication. ‘I have tried to keep it light and entertaining while being informative – God save us from the earnest wine bore,’ he says.

The last two decades has seen some of the most astounding changes in wine for centuries, principally with the rapid growth in quality and range of wines from the New World. It has made every wine lover think afresh and Julian was keen to reflect this in A Guide to Wine. His intention was, from the start, to make the whole subject accessible to everyone – whether buying wines from mail order clubs, supermarkets, or specialist wine merchants (all of which he does). You don’t have to pay a lot of money to get a good wine.

But he still hopes one day to sample certain great wines, such as Romanée-Conti, described as having ‘reserves of flavour beyond imagination’. And he recalls one very particular event which would not have been possible to replicate through your friendly off-licence. "My wife and I went to supper with a friend who is a leading wine merchant. There were four of us. We started with two bottles of really good white wine, and he then served three great vintages of Cheval Blanc, 1961, 1948 and 1929. We compared, and drank all three." He then he got up (!) and said, “Now, what about some serious drinking!” and came up from the cellar clutching three bottles of 19th century Madeira, including an 1827 Bual. I was so moved, I wrote a little tasting note. It’s not entirely legible, but seems to refer to rich amber colour, prunes and all sorts of spices, massive alcohol and amazing freshness on the palate.

And that, for Julian Curry is what a night of wine can, on rare occasions, be like.