Raymond Blake reviews Oz Clarke’s Story of Wine: 8000 Years, 100 Bottles by Oz Clarke.
Not many wine people are widely known and easily recognized by their first name only, though not many have a name as memorable, easy to say and pronounce, as “Oz.” It wasn’t always thus, for Oz Clarke was christened Owen and only became Oz when teammates on his school cricket eleven nicknamed him Oz because they reckoned he played the game like an Australian. That said, one cannot help feeling that even if Oz Clarke answered to a more prosaic John or Peter or Tom, wine people would instantly know who was being spoken of. He’s that sort of guy; he’s more than just a memorable name.
Nobody paints a verbal picture of a wine’s flavor quite like Oz does. And in this he is well served by his thespian background (he narrowly escaped a career as an actor before settling on wine). The theater’s loss was wine’s gain—something I have learned to my great delight on every occasion we have met but most especially in 2019, when I commissioned Clarke to speak at a grand wine dinner attended by 180 aviation executives from around the globe (see WFW 68, pp.142–47).
His contribution was the highlight of the evening, finishing with a resounding flourish when describing the final wine of the dinner, a Château d’Yquem 2009: “Astonishing wine. Its sheer richness, its exotic fruit cocooned in honey and cream, is so viscous and
This Article was originally published on World of Fine Wine
