As a young man, John Lewis was playing rugby for a club in Armidale and writing rugby league stories as a sports writer for the Armidale Express.
The rugby club had a strong beer drinking culture, which didn't suit John, as he got migraines from drinking beer. But that pushed him in another direction, and he found delight and satisfaction drinking Woodley's Est, a sweet white wine from South Australia, comparable to a muscat.
Little did he know that early dalliance with wine was the beginning of a long association with it: this week John finishes 47 years of writing about food and wine for the Newcastle Herald.
John Lewis has been writing a weekly column in the mid-week food pages of the Herald and reviewing five wines a week in the Wednesday Herald and Saturday Weekender until now. He celebrated his 90th birthday on Monday, and has decided to spend more time in other pursuits.
He still enjoys a glass of wine.
In a friendly Q & A session last week, John talked about his love of wine and the people around it.
Do you have drinking mates?
Yes. I've got people. I started off playing squash with them. We decided we'd get together and drink cheese and biscuits and have a glass of wine to mark a birthday. And someone said, 'Why don't we go and have a full lunch?'. So I managed to find a venue that would let us take wine. All the the squash players have died except me. But I've got a team of eight very good pals, when anyone's birthday pops up we have a very long lunch.
What are the biggest changes you've seen in the wine industry?
The biggest changes I think are the disappearance of the great family corporations who run the big end of town. The Penfolds have all gone. The Seppelts have disappeared. People like the Lindemans are no longer there. The brands are there, but the families aren't there, long since gone. So you have, in some cases, stock exchange listed companies that are all subject to shareholder pressure for dividends. You see this in some degree affecting the attitude toward their winemaking.
Do you have any tasting rituals, John?
I think I've got to confess to a Hunter palate. I really grew up on Hunter wines, I very much like the wines that we get from people like Tyrrells and Brokenwood and the Tullochs, famous names in Hunter winegrowing. They have such wonderful histories to them. The Tyrrells are one of the few survivors of family wine growing in Australia. They do a superb job in producing Hunter wines of international standard.
Do you have any special rules for reviewing?
My approach has always been you give your readers your opinion and the proviso is, it's my opinion and you have every right to disagree and come to different conclusions. Wine is agriculture, but it is also art, high art.
What is your favorite food and wine combination?
I think that's a good steak [medium rare] and a Brokenwood Graveyard syrah [shiraz].
What are your favourite varietals?
Syrah and semillon.
What is your favourite region?
I have to admit the Hunter. Although, you've got to concede Penfolds for arguments sake, produce some superb syrah wines. The wineries in Margaret River in Western Australia are, I think, producing probably the best cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay wines in Australia nowadays. To an extent they have usurped the position in cabernet sauvignon that Coonawarra once held. I don't denigrate Coonawarra, but I do think Margaret River has taken top role.
When you order a bottle in a restaurant, do you taste it first?
The big thing I find annoying is getting a red wine that's been in the freezer. Not only that, but a lot of eating houses store their white wines in the freezer. So if you order a white wine it's cold as charity. And I always say, that 20 minutes in the fridge before you drink it is just about right for a white wine. And on a hot day, it doesn't hurt to let your red wine have five minutes or so in the fridge.
When was the last time you picked grapes?
Earlier in the year I went to Tyrrells and had a day there, which was marvellous occasion. We did a retrospective tasting of Vat 47 chardonnay and they took me out to the vineyard, I picked a few grapes then. I avoid the onerous task of grape picking as much as I can.
