Jamie Goode, The Goode Guide to Wine: a manifesto of sorts. University of California Press, 2020.

The trouble with barbecue, at least here in the United States, is that everyone has their own particular idea of what it is and should be. Regional traditions and practices about what to cook (beef, pork, lamb) and how to cook it  and even how to cut (or chop) it have strong proponents. I suspect that duels have been fought (or fistfights, at least) over what is or isn’t barbecue.

Confronted with a fine example of Texas barbecue, for example, the best that someone from North Carolina might offer is the rather weak complement, “it’s good … but it ain’t  barbecue.”

I think this problem applies anywhere people have strong opinions and so it is a wine book problem, too. “It’s good, I guess … ” someone might say or write about a new volume on French wine, “… but it’s not my idea of a book about French wine.” The author’s right to have a different idea, which might in fact be the whole point, doesn’t always get the respect it deserves.

Jamie Goode’s new book is especially likely to suffer from this problem, so I encourage you to approach it with an open mind. Goode is one of the most fascinating characters in the wine business, which is quite full of characters generally. A scientist and former science editor, he began writing about wine on the web very early in the game and has for some time supported himself though writing and speaking about wine.

Goode brings that questioning scientific mind to his work as well as humor, imagination, and a lot of energy. I tell you this from personal experience (our paths have crossed in Cape Town, Napa, Porto, and British Columbia) that spending an evening talking and drinking wine with Jamie Goode is as exciting as it is exhausting. He’s a treasure.

Goode’s long list of books define what you might think of as Goode’s barbecue. They are tightly organized and draw heavily on his scientific background. I am a fan of these books because I can always rely upon Goode to take a technical question, explain it very clearly to me, weight the evidence, and draw a conclusion.

Goode By the Numbers

The Goode Guide to Wine is good, someone familiar with Goode’s previous books might say, but it ain”t Goode’s barbecue. Not so tightly organized and much more personal, it is a peek into the mind of this fascinating fellow as he travels the wine world, seeking out questions, weighing evidence, making up his mind. Since the mind is constantly churning around, the book is, too. Could make you dizzy. Takes a little getting used to.

One way to see this is to compare the basic structure of the Goode Guide with one of Jamie Goode’s previous works, I Taste Red: The Science of Tasting Wine.  I Taste Red divides a little over 200 pages into 10 chapters. The Goode Guide is a little shorter in length, but has 56 chapters. So you can see that each chapter is much smaller, many just a couple of pages.

I read one review that especially objected to this, saying that it looked like a bulked-up Twitter feed. I don’t see it that way. Goode’s style here reminds me a little of one of my favorite books, Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. The content is completely different, of course, although Brautigan’s book is also a manifesto of sorts, but the short, punchy chapters drive the reader forward in both cases.

Like a conversation with the author, Goode’s ideas pile up as the discussion moves around and circles back. It’s left to the reader to sort things out sometimes, which is a responsibility I am willing to accept.

Boring Writers Beware

This is not guide to buying wine but a discussion of how to think about it. Chapters range from #1: The Heart of Authenticity to #56: Why It Matters. Good tells us that the first half of the book is aimed more at wine drinkers and the second half for the trade.  Each is a manifesto, of sorts, I suppose, but Goode undermines dogmatic notions. It’s OK to disagree with me, Goode says repeatedly, but first think about this … and this … .

Everyone who is a wine writer or works with them needs to read chapter 53, “How to succeed at wine writing by writing boring articles.” I warn you: once you’ve read insightful Goode’s account (including the insider bits) you’ll never be able to read wine articles quite the same way again.

The Goode Guide to Wine ain’t barbecue, but it’s really good. Highly recommended.

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New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin is my authority on barbecue culture. Trillin seems to like all sorts of things that are called barbecue, but the real thing for him is found at Arthur Bryant’s in Kansas City, Missouri.