AUSTRALIAN VINEYARDS
WINE IN AUSTRALIA, by Walter James; Georgian House, Melbourne. Australian price, 21/-. T may be my misfortune, but it is certainly not my fault that I cannot fully appreciate the breadth of knowledge and the discriminating taste that have gone into the making of this dictionary of Australian wines. Yet I have had my moments, and like "The Silent Traveller in London" (Chiang Yee) have watched spellbound as a fellowguest "curled his fingers caressingly round the glass, sunk his nose in it, closed his eyes, and smelt the fragrance for a long time." If it is true, as Mr. James asserts, that "good wine reflects far less the sun in particular heavens and the soil around the roots than the skill of its maker and his conquest of avarice," then I must suppose that a country gets the wine it deserves, and in that find the reason for the further assertion that New Zealand, a nation of beer-drinkers (over 30 million gallons a year) "produces little wine and that little bad." It
is no consolation either to read that the worst Australian wines are "not just bad, they are evil," for the best are "comparable with the greatest.’ This book, which is more than the story behind the label, is written with delicious humour as with obvious authority, and it is attractively illus-
trated.
L.J.
W.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 725, 5 June 1953, Page 13
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228AUSTRALIAN VINEYARDS New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 725, 5 June 1953, Page 13
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