Frank Smulders MW has been in the commercial wine business since 1985, and graduated as a Master of Wine in 1992. Since 2001, he has been working on his own account. Smulders co-owns Terrana Wines with Hans Bijvoets, representing top wineries in different winemarkets in northwest Europe. Wine education is a secondary activity for Smulders as he conducts lectures thoughout Europe and organises winecourses in the Netherlands. This Master of Wine also acts as a consultant for wineries, especially in Spain, helping them to link production with the market.

L&S: What do you enjoy most about wine?
There is no simple answer here. Surely some wines can give you a purely hedonistic pleasure. The sheer enjoyment of drinking a fabulous wine is hard to be matched by any other drink; at least for me that is. Then there is the intellectual aspect to it. A good wine hits me right in the brain. This is difficult to explain, but the complex combinations of flavors and textures in a good wine stimulates my brain, makes me think and wonder what it is that I taste and where it comes from. Variety, terroir, winemaker? Indeed, drinking a good wine is intellectually challenging for me.

Last, but perhaps most importantly, wine has brought me to so many wonderful places, made me meet highly interesting and enjoyable people. To know and understand wine, you must have seen its origins, its roots. Where did the grapes grow, and who made that wine. And wine for me plays an important role in my social life. You don’t enjoy a great wine all alone. The most memorable wines I had in my life were all enjoyed with good friends, preferably during a good meal. Enjoying wine for me means enjoying people.

L&S: What are some of your personal favorites at the moment?
Saying that this depends on my mood, company or food would be a boring answer, albeit true to a large extent. Sure I have some favorites, wines I always love to drink and for which I would create the right company or food. I love lightness, freshness in wines. That excludes a lot of new world wines, lots of southern European wines, and lots of heavy handed red wines in general.

Of course I love Champagne. Favorites would be Jacquesson, La Grande Dame, Sir Winston Churchill, Tarlant. I am madly in love with German Rieslings. Quite honestly a bit less with some of the Grosses Gewächs wines, but more traditionally styled Rieslings, low in alcohol and with some residual sugar are amongst my longtime lovers. Fritz Haag, Robert Weil, Leitz, and many, many more always make me happy. A bit bigger but still wonderfully balanced are the great Grüner Veltliners from Austria. Hirtzberger, Bründlmayer, Schloss Gobelsburg, Prager, Salomon, too many to write down in this limited space. For lack of space I now have to ignore bone dry Sancerre, or Chablis for that matter, and cannot mention the incredibly nicely drinking Remelluri Blanco from Rioja.

Of course I also like red wines. As long as they offer lightness and acidity, that is. And are not over-oaked. Ridge Montebello would be my new world fiancée. In Italy my votes go to Barolo and Barbaresco, preferably with a bit of age. Conterno comes to mind, Altare, Vietti, Boglietti, to name just a few. In Spain I love Rioja, though not all the new kids on the block who are often too brutal in their concentration, alcohol and oak. But Artadi will always do, as will Remelluri, Roda or Muga. In France choice is abundant. I love red Burgundy, but would not dare to call myself an expert on the theme. Bordeaux, as long as it is properly aged, meaning minimum 15 years. Oh yes, and Northern Rhône, where I carry a secret passion for the wines of Clape in Cornas: great wines, and reasonably priced.

L&S: What would be your best advice to wine novices when purchasing a bottle of wine?
Buy less but better. Forget about midpriced wines from unknown areas or producers, advised by your local wine merchant for their excellent price/quality ratio. Buy something really good from a well-known, highly rated producer or area. It may not be cheap, but it is not necessarily expensive either. In Germany, Austria, Rioja, the Rhône valley you can still find absolutely excellent wines at affordable prices. Only these wines will show you the real potential of an area or grape variety, surely these wines will deliver what you are looking for. Real drinking pleasure, with the intellectual challenge required to understand them added for free.

L&S: How has the Europe wine market looked recently?
This is a difficult question to answer properly. The problem being there is no European wine market, but many national wine markets inside Europe. In southern Europe, the traditional wine producing countries seem to suffer from a decline in wine consumption, though the average quality of what people drink is increasing. In northern Europe, the wine importing countries, consumption is continuously growing, though usually only slowly. Some of the very expensive stuff, like Bordeaux 2009 and 2010, no longer has a real market in Europe. Most of what is being sold is resold to Asia, as many wine collectors consider recent price increases as being totally out of order. On a more everyday drinking level it is surprising to see how badly Australia is faring at the moment, with market shares going down in most markets. Chile, on the contrary, is doing very well.

L&S: What is the furthest you would travel for a good wine?
Well, that really depends on how you look at it. In July I visited California for a full week, together with some friends to visit wineries, meet interesting people and have a few very good meals. So if you like, that was quite a voyage for a bit of good wine. But whether I would drive or fly hours to drink that one very special wine? I don’t think so. Wine is great, and I enjoy working with it every day. But it’s not the most important thing in life. If it was, how empty my life would be...