Jancis Robinson

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is an author and television presenter. She's also a master of wine, a woman who's achieved a position of unusual influence in a world traditionally dominated by men.

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The subject of her books and television programmes is wine, and sometimes food, too, where her fluent, no-nonsense approach has made her popular with millions of readers and viewers. Her wine course was recently shown on BBC Two, and she's also edited the Oxford Companion to Wine. Although no bon viveur, she confesses, I prefer to drink wine, not talk about it. She is Jancis Robinson. Is that because wine talk, Jances, has become a rather affected business, a cheeky little wine, and a hint of tobacco here.

Speaker 31:09

Uh

Speaker 21:09

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na.

Presenter1:11

I think it's because what's important about wine isn't words, it's the sensation that it creates inside your system, inside your brain, sometimes inside your soul, certainly your heart.

Presenter1:23

It really, language is not designed to describe something as private and as variable and as subjective as that reaction between a liquid and your your nose, which is actually what it's all about. But you you make it sound as if it's more than an experience of the senses, as if it's something intellectual as well, is it? I think it it is if you want it to be, and that's certainly why I'm I can't believe I've been so lucky as to have a life which has been devoted to

Jancis Robinson1:44

Which is it?

Presenter1:52

this thing which gives gives everyone so much pleasure, but

Presenter1:56

Is so much deeper than that because, yeah, each bottle of wine comes with a story, it comes with a bit of history.

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But if I gave you two glasses of white wine and one was an Australian, a good Australian Chardonnay, and the other was a French Chardonnay with all the history and the skill that goes into that, would you know immediately would your palate tell you which was which? I think Australian Chardonnay in particular has a particular style. And you talk as though the Australian Chardonnay couldn't possibly have a history and a story, and of course more and more of them do. And what's interesting is that in this burgeoning new world of wine, if you like, the differences between classical traditional wines and the best of the new world are getting smaller and smaller because people in the new world are getting better and better at realising that what is important is that spot on the globe and trying to get some essence of that geography into the bottle. Do you think I mean talking about the wine writer and I think it was Aubram Waugh who actually said that was an oxymoron in itself is it a peculiarly Anglo-American thing, do you think? Or do wine writers exist in countries where wine has always accompanied food?

Presenter3:10

There are wine writers in France, say, and they do have a very, very different approach. Their approach is to actually m they love finding lots and lots of similes. You know, they'll taste a muscadet and they'll say, Ah, yes, notes of acacia, of honey, a little bit of willow blossom, you know. And then they say, And this would be wonderful with oysters. They see wine and food, as you say, very much more closely allied. But we do, because we haven't been

Speaker 33:39

But there is

Jancis Robinson3:39

What we do.

Presenter3:42

exposed to wine all our lives, we want to be sure that we don't waste money on wine we're not going to like. So we're rather desperate for our wine critics to tell us, is this a good buy? Is this worth my money? So we're much more practical, we're much more every day. I mean, I have the impression that those kinds of French critics are writing for the cognacente, aren't they? They think they are, actually.

Jancis Robinson3:53

Yeah.

Jancis Robinson3:59

Hey.

Presenter4:02

Every survey that tries to get to grips with how much the French know about wine usually comes up with the fact that the French think that they're born to know about wine and actually don't because they take it for granted. They've never bothered no no one teaches them because they're supposed to know all about it. And actually

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Oh it sounds terribly chauvinistic, but the the British

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Are great connoisseurs. There is a great tradition of connoisseurship in this country, and I feel very lucky to be here.

Presenter4:30

Tell me about your first record. It's The Holly and the Ivy, sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, and it.

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If I were on this desert island, I've always been worried about whether this desert island was hot or cold, do we know? Well, it's w what you believe it to be.

Presenter4:46

I think I'd probably on balance like it to be quite hot during the day, and it might even get too hot during the day. And I think this music would remind me of winter chill, of the smell of very old oak in a church, of going to lots of evensongs and um and England.

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We all test.

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Sweet singing in God.

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Only bears on blossom, as white as in flower.

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Mary more sweet Jesus Christ to be a sweet saint.

Jancis Robinson5:48

Uh

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Oh, the rising of the sun.

Jancis Robinson5:56

Rising of the Sun

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All thirteen.

Speaker 36:05

Oh, sweet singing here.

Presenter6:12

The Holly and the Ivy, sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Sir David Wilcox. One of the most attractive parts of your approach to wine, Jansis, which attracts a deal of snobbery and pretentiousness, is that you seem to relish debunking a lot of the rules and affectations that surround it. So let me lob some up for you to debunk. Rule number one, you should always open a red wine an hour or so before drinking to allow it to breathe. I don't debunk for its sake, I must say. I suppose I don't believe that is a good idea, because I have a s mildly scientific background. I have a great respect for science.

Presenter6:48

And I cannot see for the life of me how exposing that tiny, tiny surface that's inside the neck of a bottle to air can possibly make any difference to the great bulk of wine which is sitting in the bottle. I can see that if you happen to have a very old bottle of wine, or a very, very unusual bottle of wine that's got s some sort of nasty smell trapped between the cork and and the surface of the wine that

Presenter7:15

Taking the cork out and possibly just swilling it around would help that smell to dissipate. But perhaps if you then put it straight into the glass and then let it sit in the glass, because then there's a larger circle of it. Exactly, exactly. If what you want to do is aerate the wine, and there is often some logic in that, because it might be a wine that's actually a bit too young and tough, and if you aerate it, it makes it taste softer and gentler. It's sort of that tart air. The stuff that dries the inside of your cheeks.

Jancis Robinson7:24

Exact area.

Jancis Robinson7:35

It's a design

Jancis Robinson7:37

That's just

Jancis Robinson7:38

Yeah.

Presenter7:40

So there's a great logic to opening the bottle before you're going to serve it, sloshing it firmly into a decanter or even a jug, or glasses might be a little bit too much because then the surface area exposed to the air is very, very great and you might have lost something, I think. I thought you were also going to say that you shouldn't decant wine. You don't have to decant wine.

Jancis Robinson7:56

And you might

Presenter8:04

It's sensible if there's a deposit in the bottom to decant it, because otherwise somebody's going to get bitter dregs to chew. But certainly there's no need to decant wine. And some people, some scientists think that you risk losing far more than you risk gaining, and that what you should do is just, if it's got deposit, decant it just before you're going to serve it, then pour it, then if you realise it needs more aeration, it's sort of drying the insides of your cheeks and you can't get enough smell out of it, then swirl it around in the glass. Be in charge yourself.

Presenter8:35

Corks. Corks are the very best way of stoppering one. Rubbish, you say. Well, I I lo I mean, the uh what I love is

Presenter8:43

That. I mean, that who doesn't love the noise of a cork popping? It's wonderfully anticipatory. But those corks and those corkscrews, I mean, it it is they're so inconvenient, aren't they? The number of times I've pulled and pulled and pulled without success and got terribly frustrated not being able to get inside the bottle. And I know that there is absolutely no reason to use cork on 95% of the wine that we drink. No. 95% of the wine that we drink we don't store. We drink it within a year or

Presenter9:17

Maybe two. So we could have a screw cap. We could have a screw cap, we could have a crown cap like beer. It's just that every time the wine industry goes to the consumer and says, How would you feel about this? the consumer goes, Ah, no, I like the corkscrew. That's all part of the ritual. And perhaps if you open one bottle a month, it is part of the ritual. And it's it's a professional whinge, mine, because I open

Jancis Robinson9:18

So it could have a screwdriver.

Presenter9:38

You know, often thirty bottles a day, and I want something that's going to be quick and easy and not risk cork taint. It's such a shame when a really good wine, or even an ordinary wine, is spoilt because of this taint. And that wouldn't happen with something more prosaic like a screw cat. Tell me about record number two. Dancing in the Street, Martha and the Vandela is so good that it's had a cover version which wasn't nearly as good. Very ancient record of my teenage, and to me it conjures up cheap scent and warm beer and sweat and disco strobe lighting, the late sixties.

Speaker 310:19

It's your brand new beat

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Summer's here and the time is

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Boys singing in the street, been dancing into parts.

Speaker 310:34

And you wanna leave that?

Presenter10:46

Martha Reeves and the Vandelas with the Motown hit dancing in the street and memories of cheap scent and warm beer and well it's the the last bus home from Carlisle from the outside the disco went at nine fifteen, unless it was a Saturday night, in which case it was ten thirty.

Jancis Robinson10:52

Damn.

Presenter11:01

It seemed very exciting at the time to me. Even if it did end it up last night.

Jancis Robinson11:03

Me Even if it did end it up last night.

Presenter11:06

And you were a good grammar school girl, Carlisle High, wasn't it? Carlisle High School for Girls, yes. I was brought up, spent the first eighteen years in a village of forty-five people just outside Carlisle. Who didn't drink wine.

Presenter11:18

No more my family drank an average amount of wine for a middle class family in the sixties, which was not very much.

Jancis Robinson11:25

Not at all.

Presenter11:27

But sherry on a Sunday. Yeah, yeah. And um wine at Christmas and you know, the odd other bottle when they were having people to dinner. But it wasn't part of the culture and it wasn't for anybody. I mean, it we just unless you were one of the very few people who were brought up

Jancis Robinson11:29

Yeah, yeah.

Jancis Robinson11:32

Mm.

Jancis Robinson11:35

But it wasn't

Presenter11:42

With a cellar, you really didn't come across wine. I mean, when I was brought up in Cumberland,

Presenter11:47

The word wine, every time it was said, was said as though it had quotation marks round it, a bit like polo or

Jancis Robinson11:52

Time

Presenter11:54

Barbados or something. Did that have quotation marks round it?

Jancis Robinson11:54

Mm-hmm.

Jancis Robinson11:58

The water

Presenter12:01

Perhaps a little bit, yes. Because you were the only girl, I think, from your school. I was the only one from my year who went. I think we r the Carlisle High School regularly sent perhaps one person a year to Oxbridge, and I was the one.

Jancis Robinson12:02

Yeah.

Jancis Robinson12:04

I'm not the only one.

Presenter12:12

But they sort of believed, you said at once, that you ought to be a window dresser. Yes. I had a Latin mistress who was very reluctant I think they felt, Carr, that it they didn't want to bother Oxbridge, you know, with too many candidates. And I I remember her saying, Yes, I

Jancis Robinson12:26

Um

Presenter12:29

I'm surprised about your having a go at the Oxbridge entrance. She said, I I could see you as a window dresser. Liberties, she said.

Jancis Robinson12:32

Ta-da.

Speaker 312:32

Dead.

Jancis Robinson12:33

Uh

Presenter12:36

But perhaps it was more a reflection on my clothes than my brain. I don't I hope so. And at some point you were semi-anorexic. Yeah, yes, I was. I w uh when I was seventeen I um I got very bored and I was doing double maths for A level so I was very numerate and I discovered these things called calories. And I also it was Twiggy era. Um and I thought I was too fat, and I s started to count my calories and I I suddenly found here's this wonderful thing that you can quantify, you know, you can actually sort of write down how many calories you have each day.

Presenter13:09

And the the fewer you eat, the thinner you get.

Presenter13:12

And the f but the thinner you get, the the m less rational you get. I mean, I was never hospitalized or I mean, I kept going to school you know, going to school and having a normal life, although I I did I wo I used to be an athlete and I could no longer run very far.

Presenter13:26

But of course, anything you deny yourself, you become absolutely riveted by. And I immediately became riveted by food because I was denying myself. And I started to cook. And as any anorexic knows, any food you give somebody else is a sort of negative in the equation. You know, you automatically lose weight yourself by giving food to others. That's the sort of the crazy logic that you have. And I used to love cooking, and I got very interested in food. I went up to Oxford very interested in food.

Presenter13:55

You know, it was a very short step from from being interested in food to being interested in wine.

Presenter14:00

So what was the moment, the seminal moment, when you drank what and thought what? I think you find that most people who've devoted a large part of their lives to wine do have a seminal glass. A really good wine that is so much better than anything they've had before that they realise that wine can bring all sorts of emotions to them that they never realise. And mine was in a restaurant outside Oxford called The Rose Revived, and it was a red burgundy. It was a 1959 Chambon Musigny les amoureuse, and I haven't a clue who made it, because I didn't know at that stage that that's the all-important thing. But it was just so much more concentrated, and each mouthful lasted so much longer. It just took me to another place, and I thought.

Presenter14:46

There is something very exciting about this drink.

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Record number three.

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Ah, now this is very close to my heart. It's um

Presenter14:55

It's from uh Handel opera Roderlinda.

Presenter14:59

I listened to it for the first time in a hotel room in California.

Presenter15:04

About um a month after I first met Nick, my husband.

Presenter15:10

waiting for him to arrive from

Presenter15:13

Hong Kong via Los Angeles and I'd been coming the other way round the world and we'd made a date to meet in this hotel. Um and I was shown to a room and I waited there for about three hours. Um he didn't turn up. I loved the music. I suppose I must have been worried, I can't remember. He had been shown to a completely different room and was pacing up and down outside, but I've loved Rodalinda ever since.

Presenter15:38

and only discovered this year when Blindbourne asked me to record a cassette about it that in fact it is the story of a man and his wife who are separated.

Speaker 315:54

Yeah.

Speaker 315:56

Tripoff is glory of his glory for

Jancis Robinson16:01

Ah

Speaker 316:07

Wish for them.

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Most behind him.

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Please don't cast.

Speaker 316:31

Yeah.

Speaker 316:32

That's the only thing.

Speaker 316:39

Praise all the old.

Speaker 316:43

Face for a deal.

Presenter16:50

The duet I O Tabraccio from Handel's Rodolinda, sung by Joan Sutherland and Alicia Naffey, with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonning. Music that reminds you of meeting your husband Nick Lander, Jancis Robinson, who owned one of London's fashionable restaurants, Lescargo. So you recognised a bon viveur when you met him, did you?

Speaker 317:09

When you mentioned that, yeah.

Presenter17:11

I suppose I did, yes. I hadn't know when I met him he it was um a shell. He was importing California wine at the time and he'd meant to open a small wine bar to sell them through. And um an architect friend had and he had just fallen in love with this building and had taken it on far too much really. And I thought he knew what he was doing. And I'm so glad that I didn't at that stage realise what a perilous enterprise it was. But you don't like the term bon fever, do you? You find it pejorative in some ways. I just associate it too much with Fanny and Johnny Craddock, really.

Presenter17:46

I mean the system's a bit dilettante, doesn't it? I suppose if you mean someone who really enjoys their food and drink, I am a bon viveur. Can you argue, though, that having to taste wine for a living is hard work? Surely not.

Presenter17:58

Actually, I yes I can. It's very, very different, the process of tasting, from the process of drinking. And what I tend to do during the day is is hard work, it's tasting.

Presenter18:09

Your senses have to be absolutely finely honed. You have to fight against all odds to keep any of that the the occupational hazard, alcohol, from affecting you. You even if you're spitting it out, you can't. Even if you spit it, I think you absorb some, either as vapor or it just sort of trickles down the back of your throat. I mean, I've calculated I

Jancis Robinson18:21

Even if you spit it.

Presenter18:28

actually must drink about the equivalent of a glass every time I taste thirty wines. Just by comparing what I spit out. So what's the process? Would you sit down at your kitchen table at nine thirty on a Monday morning and set about tasting thirty bottles of Australian cheer as or something?

Speaker 218:35

So what

Presenter18:43

I'd probably not do it first thing in the morning. I tend to if I'm doing that at home, I'd prefer to do it late afternoon because I just I'm as being a woman particularly, and as I get older, I find the alcohol does have more and more of an effect. So the downside of being a wine critic and going through all these tastings is that as you say, you might get a bit tiddly and you might sort of suffer physically. Jaded, jaded. Jaded. Good word. What about your teeth? I mean, the problem with red wine is it makes your teeth black. Terrible, terrible, terrible. I mean, I have to go around after a tasting and try and remember.

Jancis Robinson19:07

Jaded, jaded. Jaded. Good word.

Jancis Robinson19:11

Red wine is, it makes your teeth black.

Presenter19:19

Not to expose my teeth when I smile. And you can't clean them in the middle of a tasting because the toothpaste will ruin them. Toothpaste is the worst. Toothpaste is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, this, I'm afraid, soon. But toothpaste is wine's adversary. And so many people brush their teeth just before going out in the evening and wonder why their first drink tastes so metallic and horrible. But.

Jancis Robinson19:21

And you could

Jancis Robinson19:23

Basically

Presenter19:40

Last question on palates. The female palate is the superior palate. Apparently, I'm making no personal claims here, but but scientists who've tested this and have taken untutored people and taught them to recognize flavours and identify them always find that that women women consistently perform better than men.

Presenter19:59

Next piece of music. It's Midnight at the Oasis, Maria Maldar, and I just find this a a wonderfully um relaxing piece of music which I have never grown tired of and it always lifts the spirits and I think I will need my spirits lifted at my own little oasis on this island.

Speaker 320:16

Midnight at the awaiting

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Send your camel to bed.

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Shadows fainting on faces

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Tracy.

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'S a romance in our head

Speaker 320:36

Have been told in a hair

Speaker 320:41

Shining just for all

Presenter20:44

Midnight at the Oasis sung by Maria Maldawa.

Presenter20:49

You are, Jances, a master of wine. What does that mean exactly? Oh, it means a heck of a lot of work, actually. It also means that um

Presenter20:57

It means that grammar school upbringing coming back to haunt me, because in

Presenter21:01

1984, I was I'd had one series of um or two series of um programmes on Channel Four about wine, and um I was wine correspondent to the Sunday Times and I'd written several books, but they suddenly changed the rules of this thing called the Master of Wine exam, which is a they reckon the world's most difficult or certainly broadest exam about wine, which is held in this country, run by the the British wine trade. And they changed the rules and said that you didn't have to actually be in the trade to do it, and wouldn't I have a go? Because I'd had done all the exams leading up to it.

Presenter21:39

Terrifying. I mean, you must have felt I'm now going to be found out. Well, there was that. I mean, that's, I think, what all my friends said. My friends and Nick and everybody said, you're crazy to do it. I mean, you stand to lose far more than you stand to gain. Because very few people passed.

Jancis Robinson21:39

Terrify

Jancis Robinson21:50

'Cause very few people

Presenter21:56

So was it like doing your finals all over the world? It was, and of course the longer you leave since your finals, the more addled your brain is and the the worse your memory is.

Jancis Robinson21:57

It was.

Presenter22:05

I was also pregnant. I was expecting our second child, our son, and I think that helped actually because it meant that I had absolutely no desire to actually drink the stuff, because part of the exam is is what they call practical, i.e. three of the papers are you're given twelve glasses of wine and have to identify and assess them as closely as you can. So that's thirty six in all.

Speaker 222:26

And the other papers are

Presenter22:26

So I I just literally sipped and and spat the wines out and and looked at them very objectively. And I did pass. So

Speaker 222:29

Yeah.

Presenter22:43

I think if I'd failed, the trade would have said we always knew the wine writers knew nothing, you know. Record number five. Now this uh of course there's Mozart. Um this is Clemenza Di Tito, a late, late work with some beautiful music in it. This is a love song. Again, that the lovers of course sort of separated by the plot. And it's just a a beautiful bit of music that whenever I listen to it I just go, oh.

Speaker 323:10

A winter of that was wanting of

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And move, move and move.

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Who's safe? How do we all do?

Speaker 323:39

Oh, see what you're doing.

Speaker 323:44

Blessed with Lord forever glory, with all in those on high, the beauty of blessed Lord.

Speaker 324:01

Oh, it's only a little bit of a

Presenter24:08

The duet A Perdona al Primo Afetto, from Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, sung by Lucia Popp and Frederike von Stade, with the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Sir Colin Davis.

Presenter24:20

Jances Robinson, you recently turned your analytical palate to food for a television series in which you criticised much that was on offer in the supermarkets versions of chicken, kief and pizza and so on. But it's really the consumer. I mean, we're to blame, aren't we? Because we buy it. I think so. I just wish that more people could get as much pleasure as I do out of good food, and that the British could get over their reluctance to spend just a little bit more on food. I mean, I I know I fully appreciate that there are far too many people who who don't have even an extra

Presenter24:55

Penny.

Presenter24:56

But of the rest, we are so happy to make do with Second Best. We we quite understand why it's worth w that we get something extra if we pay for a slightly more expensive car, but we're very little we think it's a waste if we s we spend a little bit more to have a chicken and paste.

Jancis Robinson25:13

Yeah.

Speaker 325:13

Uh

Jancis Robinson25:13

Uh

Speaker 325:13

Peace.

Jancis Robinson25:13

To more than

Presenter25:20

Yes, although we ought to be getting out of it now if you look at the total sales of, I don't know, cookery books and wine books and

Jancis Robinson25:20

Yes.

Presenter25:26

people watching things on on the telly, we're all obviously interested in it, but to relate that to actually what we are sensing with our palates and and trying to um really notice how much pleasure each thing is giving and and I would love more of a return to

Presenter25:43

Good.

Presenter25:45

Primary ingredients, the right sort of a chicken that tastes of a chicken, rather than a cheap bit of white flesh that you've then got to open a jar of chicken ticker relish to pour all over it to supposedly make it taste of something. It's interesting though, isn't it, that over the past twenty years, you know, wine in Britain anyway, and the sort of wine that's supplied to us has got better and better. Whereas I think what we're saying is food has deteriorated. Yes, it seems as though the application of technology has been beneficial to wine. It's ironed out so many mistakes that used to be made, because wine is quite fragile and actually there was an awful lot of just vinegar or

Presenter26:27

badly made stuff available when I started.

Presenter26:30

But technology seems to have run away with food. It seems to have.

Presenter26:34

Taken it too far from its roots somehow and rehashed it and transformed it and put it back together again as.

Presenter26:42

a a technological product rather than something one actually wants to eat.

Presenter26:46

Record number six. Tatler by Rykuda. I love Raikouda. He's one of the few people that I've I've actually been to listen to. I think I've spanned now from Hammersmith Odeon to Royal Festival Hall. He's a brilliant musician. This is just one of my many favourite Raikuda tracks.

Jancis Robinson27:04

Marry the wrong kind of woman and you get where you can

Jancis Robinson27:12

Well you just as well look at your hand

Jancis Robinson27:16

Let that woman be.

Jancis Robinson27:20

Men oughta make good husbands

Jancis Robinson27:24

Quit trying to lead a fast life.

Jancis Robinson27:28

Going about dressing up other women

Jancis Robinson27:32

Warmer clothes on it, all white.

Presenter27:37

Rykuda and Tatler from the album Paradise and Lunch.

Presenter27:41

So, Jansis, where are the trembling hands and the blood-shot eyes of the regular imbiber? I think you've confessed in in the past to something in excess of

Presenter27:50

Well, in excess of twenty units a week. I mean, I know that the

Presenter27:55

Uh r normally Nick and I will share a bottle of an evening and have quite a bit left. That's the normal thing. But then abnormally, every now and then um there's certainly a a feast. And so I s I suppose

Presenter28:09

All I would say is I try to drink at least as much water as wine. Do you think that helps? I think that helps enormously, because I think a lot of the after effects of alcohol are simple dehydration, aren't they? Do you get hangovers? Sometimes, yes, and they're terrible. I hate it. Even with the best of wine. The better the wine, the less likely it is. Do you worry about your health? Yes, I do. I do, I do. And certainly I wrote a book once, sort of Consumer's Guide to Alcohol, which my colleagues in wine didn't bother to read but assumed it was saying how terrible alcohol was.

Jancis Robinson28:13

Do you have a

Jancis Robinson28:22

Even with the

Speaker 328:29

Yes, I do!

Presenter28:40

Simply because I wanted to know what the evidence was against certain levels of alcohol consumption and so forth, and I found it quite reassuring really. And of course, since then we've seen far more evidence that some alcohol, and probably particularly wine, can be good for you. So we're all right. I think we're all right. Yeah, yeah. And we're bright of eye and brain and all that.

Speaker 328:57

I think we're alright. Yeah!

Presenter29:02

You edited the Oxford Companion to Wine, which would prove that you were bright of eye. Quite a tour de force. So there's little you don't know about the grape, or well you should know most. Does that knowledge lead you to worry at all about the lack of diversification, as we've become so wedded, you know, to the Chardonnay grape and the Cabernet grape, to the detriment of others? Yes. But I'm quite heartened very recently that I think there is um a recognition that that would be very dreary, and that though Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon are by no means perfect for every spot on the globe, and every spot on the globe probably has something that's perfect for it, and that they should be celebrated. I mean, for instance

Presenter29:41

Argentina is a new entrant on this sort of massive race to sell us wine.

Presenter29:48

And it has a huge quantity of a grape called Malbec planted. And because they've got so much of it, the Argentines tend to think it can't be any good. But all of us who've visited there have gone, Hey, this is great. This is better than any Malbeck I've ever tasted, even back in France, in Cao, where it was sort of born. Don't pull it all up and plant Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. But there must be grapes that are being pulled up because they're not being used that you don't know about, that experts don't know about. That's the sadness of it, isn't it? It's like the potato, actually. Again, the supermarkets have homed in on half a dozen breeds of potato and the rest

Speaker 330:07

But then

Presenter30:21

You know, a lot of people are not sure. It's true, although as with potatoes, I think that just very, very recently there's been a recognition that this would be sad.

Jancis Robinson30:22

And this is true, although

Presenter30:29

More music.

Presenter30:31

This is that beautiful work, Pergolesi's Starbat Martyr, and I've chosen Inflammatus e Acensus or whatever, depending on your Latin teacher, which Nick says sounds like his gut. He suffers from Crohn's disease. It in fact is all about ascending to heaven to meet your Maker. And I think I'll have to be very introspective on the island, and I'll need the help of music like this.

Speaker 331:05

I please give thy holy.

Speaker 331:23

Uh

Presenter31:58

The duet Inflammatus etacensus from Pergolesi's Stabbert Martyr, sung by Margaret Marshall and Lucia Valentini Tirani, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abardo. Meet your maker music, you've called that, Jansis. Maybe that's what you'll do on your desert island. Let me ask you those difficult questions. If you were about to depart this earth, what would be the last meal you would like to have indulged in?

Speaker 332:20

Mm-hmm.

Presenter32:22

Well, I think I'd probably want to build

Presenter32:24

I have my conscience heightened.

Presenter32:27

Um I wouldn't want to feel sort of

Presenter32:30

Bloated, I wouldn't want to say probably not anything terribly stodgy.

Presenter32:36

Some wonderful I suppose perhaps it would happen on this island, some some wonderfully fresh shellfish, perhaps.

Jancis Robinson32:39

On the side.

Presenter32:44

Perhaps of bringing upon me a very slight um change of uh consciousness.

Jancis Robinson32:49

Uh

Presenter32:51

I always think practically that I would want the only wine that is not going to go off in a hurry, the only wine that will withstand any temperature and can be kept in an open bottle for as long as you like without going off. And that's th there's only one single wine that answers to that description, which is Madeira. But that's frightfully practical, isn't it? I mean, give me give me a a glue-titch wine, you know, the idea of which would would set your heart aflutter with the palate itching and the juices running. The the probably and although I hate the question, probably the greatest wine I've ever tasted.

Speaker 333:17

A good vintage rock.

Jancis Robinson33:18

You know the option

Jancis Robinson33:22

Well, Pat

Jancis Robinson33:25

So

Presenter33:30

And I didn't have much of it, and it was late at night after I'd just flown in from

Presenter33:37

Stansted and it wasn't perfect circumstances, but it was fantastic. And it was the second or third time I've tasted it, but it was the best bottle of it. It was Chateau Chauval Blanc, nineteen forty seven, which is a classic great wine, and this was absolutely marvellous.

Presenter33:51

But on a hot desert island it'll taste like vinegar. It'll be it it's not the wine for those circumstances. It's got to be on a a cool night on a Mediterranean island, that one perhaps. That's where you'll be then, isn't it? Last record.

Jancis Robinson34:01

Yeah.

Jancis Robinson34:03

Haha.

Presenter34:05

This is Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, but I've chosen perhaps not the most beautiful part of the opera, but certainly the most appropriate. It's a chorus singing the virtues of wine in general and Madeira in particular, but of course they don't know that it's going to be poisoned.

Speaker 334:27

You still kept ring love, sikkom belching the love.

Speaker 334:36

He desires.

Speaker 335:07

Me, T Landau, Swine Land!

Speaker 335:11

Oh no,

Speaker 335:14

Uh

Speaker 335:19

Damn.

Presenter35:28

Viva il Madera from Act Two of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia with the RCA Italiana Opera Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Jonel Perla.

Presenter35:38

If you could only take one of those eight records, Jances. Ah, um.

Presenter35:44

I think the Starbert Star the Pergolese, the Starbert Martyr. What about your book? Well, y we have the Bible, we have Shakespeare, don't we? And so that I think is quite meaty enough. And I will want something which will make me smile, if not laugh. Is very is easy to read but is profound and long. That's what I want. So Middlemarch is my choice. And what about your luxury?

Presenter36:09

Uh um well can I have a seller?

Presenter36:12

A cellar of what? Wine.

Presenter36:14

A full cellar. I mean, I'll give you a cellar. You can dig one if you don't.

Speaker 336:15

Now give you a second.

Speaker 336:16

Yeah.

Presenter36:20

You know, a nice big wine cellar, a cellar of wine that'll last my life.

Presenter36:24

What sort of wine is in it?

Presenter36:26

Uh oh, mixture. It's got to be from all over, yep. And and it's got to keep m titillating my palate because the last thing you know, people who don't know much about wine always choose a wine they know they're going to like.

Presenter36:39

That those of us in the business completely ignore something we know we already like. We're always looking for something new. So it's got to be very varied, but the most important thing is, of course, I've got to have a corkscrew.

Presenter36:50

You get that, and you can go on tasting till you die. Thank you. How lovely. Chances, Robinson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 237:06

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.