Andrew Jefford’s Keynote Address to the 2022 School of Cool

July 22, 2022, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario

Hello everyone. It’s great to be here with you today, after all that we’ve been through since 2019.

Imagine that wine … is music.

What sort of music? Doesn’t matter. Whatever you love most.

Do we even have to imagine?

Wine is … a sort of music.

It weaves patterns of scent and flavour rather than sound.

It brings solace to our lives, by taking us beyond ourselves, as music does, to a restorative elsewhere.

And it does this by touching us both intellectually and sensually, unlocking emotion in the process.  Just like music.

There is a language of wine, as there is a language of music. We need to learn, by long study, how to unlock the subtleties of each, rather than producing a horrible din, discordant scents, flat flavours.

We need to learn how to taste it, too, at least if we want to explore wine culture to the fullest extent …

though of course we can all enjoy wine instinctively, just as anyone can enjoy a tune, a sequence of chords, a beautiful voice.

But … who composes the music of wine? 

Read full speech here