50 Years of Great Wine Dinners by James Halliday review – a fitting close to a formidable career
50 Years of Great Wine Dinners is James Halliday’s swansong, offering a monumental record of how some of the greatest wines have tasted, from one of the industry’s greatest palates. Nimmi Malhotra reviews.
There are wine books that educate, wine books that entertain, and very occasionally, wine books that document. 50 Years of Great Wine Dinners belongs firmly in the third category, and that, ultimately, is what makes it compelling.
Announced as his swansong in 2024, the book is James Halliday’s personal work: 140 dinners, 2200 wines, drawn from five decades of meticulous records and an extraordinary memory.
It all starts with Len Evans’ dinner series, which, in hindsight, holds historic significance. Initiated by the late Len Evans OBE in the 1970s with the express purpose of understanding the world’s greatest wines, namely French, the wine dinners served as a private education for the two figures, and in time, a benchmark for the innumerable wines Halliday and Evans went on to as chairs of Australia’s wine shows.
The friendship between the two forms the narrative spine of the book, beginning over a glass of DRC La Tache 1962 and spanning decades of shared tables.
Wines span ‘the greatest of the great’
Other dinners are unashamedly grand and aspirational. Halliday curates notable vertical tastings, single-bottle dinners, and other memorable occasions, attended by former prime ministers, wine luminaries, and special friends. And the wines span the greatest of the great: Burgundy grand crus, Bordeaux classed growths, the best of Australia, and a well-chosen smattering of international gems.
Among them, he lists 187 vintages of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti wines in the index, alongside Château d’Yquem, Château Lafite, Penfolds, Seppelt, and more.
One 2002 dinner featured 78 vintages of Chateau Latour spanning 1920-2000, a vertical tasting of extraordinary scope, unlikely ever to be replicated.
A literary feast
Each dinner is prefaced by contextual headnotes that situate the wine selections within their historical moment. The 430-page hardbound book is enriched by reproductions of signed menus, Christie’s auction receipts, and Halliday’s handwritten tasting notes in his unhurried cursive script. Technical asides address wine faults common to the specific era, and references to historical wine writers illuminate the influence that shaped his palate and thinking.
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More of a retrospective, less of a memoir, Halliday refrains from sharing anecdotes of his notable guests – among them former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and wine luminary Michael Broadbent – offering little in the way of personal preferences or insight into their tastes. Readers seeking that dimension will find more in his earlier book, A Life in Wine (2012).
What truly distinguishes the book are the tasting notes themselves. Written in Halliday’s characteristically lucid, economical style, they differ markedly from the annual Wine Companion entries.
These are private reckonings – frank acknowledgements of flawed bottles, alongside moments of unguarded enthusiasm. A diminished Chateau Latour 1950 prompts a quotation from T.S. Eliot. A DRC Romanée-Conti 1983 takes him down memory lane, recounting an endearing tale of the controversial vintage and his unequivocal faith in it. The oldest wine tasted, a Tokaji 1646, elicits a long note about the wine style.
Elsewhere, he dismisses his youthful tasting notes as “hallmarks of a raw amateur,” an unexpectedly candid admission from a critic of his stature.
A book that ‘commands attention’
For the wine enthusiast, 50 Years of Great Dinners offers a longitudinal record of how some of the world’s greatest wines have tasted, as assessed by a consistent, rigorous palate over half a century.
But whether you read it as a record of gastronomical extravagance or an important archival document will depend on your perspective. What is indisputable is that the book commands attention. It is a natural continuation of Halliday’s substantial body of work, a fitting close to a formidable career and a delight to peruse with a glass of whatever you can muster.
Later, James Halliday takes a short break from his retirement to speak with the drinks business about his last major work and life in retirement.
50 Years of Great Wine Dinner by James Halliday, Hardie Grant Publishing, A$120
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