Broadbent vs Martin: the tasting note showdown

This week I’m putting two weighty wine tomes head-to-head. Representing the old school we have Michael Broadbent, and taking him on the young (ish) Turk Neal Martin.

Before we get into this week’s newsletter, I have a special offer for subscribers. On Friday 23 June at 6:30pm I’m going to be sharing some fascinating English wine at 67 Pall Mall in London including an old vintage of one of the country’s landmark wines Kit’s Coty Chardonnay, some rare English pinot noirs and many others. These paid events are usually open only to members of the club but I have ten tickets available for readers of Drinking Culture. Right, let’s get on with the main event. 

As soon as I showed some interest in wine in my early 20s I was given a copy of Michael Broadbent’s Vintage Wines. Broadbent, who died in 2020, was in charge of the wine department at Christie’s auction house in London. The book is a record of the most memorable wines he has tried over 50 years, it’s one of those books that cries out for an epithet like magisterial. As a if not the patrician English wine expert, naturally the emphasis is on France with Bordeaux and Burgundy taking up half the book but there are long sections on Germany, Hungary, port and madeira. 

I was amused looking him up on Wikipedia where I do most of my research, that Harry Eyres who worked with him at Christie’s said this about Broadbent: ‘[he]created a small niche of glamour for himself as a jet-setting wine celebrity, while everybody else in the office toiled in near Dickensian conditions.’ It wasn’t the only controversy in Broadbent’s long career. There was the case of his authentication of a bottle of 1787 Lafite that supposedly came from Thomas Jefferson’s cellar and was sold at auction by Christie’s for £105,000. Under later analysis, the bottle was found to be a forgery.  It’s well worth reading this New Yorker article on the murky subject involving a mysterious German collector Hardy Rodenstock. Broadbent touches on that notorious bottle somewhat laconically in the book: ‘the wine contained an unspecified amount of post 1960 wine. Shock, horror, and much publicity’, which scarcely does justice to the resulting scandal. 

Once you’ve got that wine out of the way, the rest of the book is less exciting. In fact, when I first opened it, I found it almost completely impenetrable. Broadbent writes beautifully but it is a book largely without compromise - these are the often quite terse tasting notes of hundreds of wines. There are no witty asides or explanations and only a brief bit of historical context. For example, the history of the entire 19th century is dealt with in a line: ‘an immense spectrum of events encompassing wars, political shenanigans, booms and busts...’ Broadbent’s style can be a bit old school with wines described as ‘somewhat precocious’ - that’s a 1949 Palmer tasted in 1986, or ‘more masculine than its ‘cousin’ Gruuad’ - a 1949 Chateau Talbot, of course.

My edition was from 2002. It’s hard to imagine something like this being published today, at least not by a mainstream publisher like Little, Brown. The modern equivalent is a book that has just been published by Neal Martin called The Complete Bordeaux Vintage Guide. Martin, for those unfamiliar with him, is a big name, he wrote the book on Pomerol, worked with Robert Parker at The Wine Advocate and is now at Vinous. I don’t  know him personally but from what I have heard, it’s hard to imagine Martin making his staff toil in near-Dickensian conditions but if anyone has heard otherwise, let me know. 

His latest book sounds like it might be a bit dry - tasting old vintages of Bordeaux from 1870 up to 2020 - but this is a wine book for the NIck Hornby generation because along with information about the vintages and little tasting notes for the wines he has tried, Martin includes some context as to what happened that year: an event, a film (once the motion picture had been invented) and a piece of music, though no books for some reason. Some of the events are rather random, who is going to argue with the Suez Crisis in 1956 but was 2002 such a quiet year that Serena Williams winning her first Wimbledon title was the main event? 

Anyway, it’s Martin’s book and largely it works. Rather than having pages and pages of tasting notes, however beautifully written, of vintages that most of us will never get so much as sniff of, it’s fascinating reading about Bordeaux in 1870. Martin describes the Lafite from that year as “imperiously above every other Bordeaux I have ever encountered - even the mighty 1945 Mouton and 1961 Latour must kowtow to its presence.” Yet this was the year of France's defeat by Prussia followed by the bloodbath of the Paris Commune. Suitably the music chosen by Martin is the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ by Wagner. What a year! And to produce such a wine with such turmoil going on. 

On first reading the book, I felt the events made the wine seem less important but on reflection, it’s the other way round. The great vintages made under difficult circumstances speak to the constancy of Bordeaux, France and wine in general. Great wine and great winemakers are working to a different timetable to the rest of us. France may have gone through three republics, a dictatorship, three wars on its own soil and now seems more turbulent than ever, but wine will always remain. Or at least that’s how I like to see it.

Comparing the two books, I was planning to have a bit of fun contrasting Broadbent’s old school tasting notes with Martin’s modern Americanised versions - ‘gobs of fruit, freshly-brewed ristretto’ etc. But they really aren’t so far apart. When Martin refers to a Latour that ‘lacks breeding’, he could be channeling George Saintsbury. Meanwhile, while Broadbent’s writing can be maddeningly allusive at times, a Warre 1985 vintage port is described as ‘an archetypal Warre,’ he’s not averse to some positively modern-sounding flavour descriptions. The same wine also has ‘a touch of toffee on the nose (malt, meat, toffee, all reflecting the almost unctuous richness of the vintage, as is the thickness of colour).’ 

As I have got older, I’ve come to enjoy Broadbent’s book more perhaps because I now have some experience drinking older wines and his terse style makes more sense. I can also appreciate his extraordinary memory for flavour. There’s also an honesty here, he’s not showing off or trying to impress anyone. Martin too has a similar quiet confidence and understated style. Despite my growing appreciation of Broadbent, if I was giving a book to a wine loving youngster or indeed oldster, I’d go for Martin’s.