Women in Wine LDN in conversation with Jancis Robinson
Jancis Robinson and Anjali Douglas
Katie worked for five years as a buyer for online fine wine retailer, FINE+RARE, before taking a break to have a baby. She holds a WSET Diploma in Wine + Spirits and has a particular interest in Champagne and Italy.
To an audience of over 100 women (and a handful of men) at the venerable Vintners’ Hall, Jancis Robinson joined Women in Wine LDN at their flagship event, discussing her 4-decade career and issues ranging from pleasure to sexism, winewriting bug bears and more.
After the talk, the attendees gathered for drinks (fabulous offerings from Piper Heidsieck, Pancho Bugallo, Miguel Ángel de Gregorio and Niepoort) and to discuss how evening’s star came across, wearing her “celebrity” with a natural, plain-spoken ease.
“Has this been recorded?” Jancis Robinson asked at the end of the talk, followed by a husky chortle, worried that her honesty may have led to the occasional indiscretion. When she started out, she explains, she felt complete freedom to say what she wanted – after all, who was listening? As her reach and influence increased, she has became more aware of the need for self-censorship. What hasn’t changed is that she treasures and fiercely guards her independence from any commercial ties – ensuring she keeps the interests of the ordinary drinker at the heart of her writing.
Jancis was happy to share her wine writing bugbears: primarily long lists of obscure descriptors in tasting notes. Palates are subjective, and one person’s “hickory-smoked kumquat” will mean nothing to the ordinary drinker. “Physiologists have found that we can only taste four different flavours at once”, she says, so finds listing ten different aromas “rather senseless”, choosing instead to focus on structure, texture and practical advice like tasting windows.
Buzz words in press releases and wine labels that get overused to the point of losing all meaning are equally irritating to Jancis: ‘passion’, ‘saline’ as the new ‘mineral’, ‘curated’, ‘limited edition’, ‘picked at optimum maturity’, everything done ‘gently’.
Jancis touched briefly on the divisive issue of wine scores, considering them herself to be a necessary evil, but highlights they are not as ubiquitous in the UK, as in the US, where every wine shelf is plastered with them.
Her tip for aspiring wine writers is to find a niche to get established – from NFTs to Romanian wine – and then to run a mile from the specialism to not be pigeonholed. Her advice in general for anyone building a career in the wine industry is “be nice to people”, “be assertive rather than strident”, and “try to enjoy it”.
To Jancis, a career in wine was always about pleasure combined with intellectual stimulation, ignoring assertions that working in wine or food was a “shocking waste of an education” for this Oxford graduate. Though her initial career aspirations are surprising, “cooking lunches for directors”, she is clearly proud of her food critic husband and restaurateur son.
She says food and wine differ, however, in that “anyone can say something about food, whereas many people don’t dare to express an opinion about wine without some education”. This is expected perhaps by certain, predominantly, men lurking in the FT.com comments section. She is glad she didn’t join the prestigious Oxford Wine Circle with other members such as Oz Clarke when she was a student, as she feels the more confident men would have beaten it out of her to pursue a wine career.
Her advice on pay inequality is to expose it if you can - ask for transparency and make a rightful claim to be paid the same as a male colleague doing the same job. Even Jancis, though, discussed feeling awkward about asking for more money and needed to be encouraged by her husband to increase her speaking fee. She came round, conceding that especially when bankers and lawyers take up her precious evenings, “they can jolly well pay!”.
Jancis says she was “shocked but not surprised” by allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct that have been particularly pernicious in the hospitality industry in recent years and though she was no stranger in her early career to hearing things like “I say, do you come to these things to taste for your boss?”, she hasn’t felt being a woman held her back in her career.
And what a career it is, spanning four decades - becoming a Master of Wine in 1984, writing for the FT since 1990 and authoring essential wine texts, including the Oxford Companion to Wine. Her latest venture is her own glassware, which she eventually agreed to because she liked designer Richard Brendon and his team so much.
Whilst she champions the future generation of wine writers (her website’s annual Wine Writer of the Year competition has just gone live), she says she has no intention of stopping just yet: “when they ask me to move, I’ll move”.
Judging by the level of appreciation from Women in Wine LDN’s audience, none of us want Jancis to go anywhere anytime soon.
