INTERVIEW WITH RALPH STEADMAN,
CREATOR OF UNTRODDEN GRAPES
 Q: From beginning to end, Untrodden Grapes is filled with stories and paintings of vineyards and local life, including portraits of winemakers, wine dogs, and birds, baboons, and mice drinking wine. What type of media and methods did you use to create these scenes and characters?
A: Anything from India ink to coffee, cold tea, car oil, human blood (mine!), wood varnish, acrylic paints, soaked wood chippings, oil paint, red wine, rust water, boiled cabbage water, sprayed colored inks that I apply using a right-angled spray tube available from most art shops—and spit.
Q: In the book's introduction, you write that "the work in this book has been accumulated during years of traveling." How much on-site painting do you do, and how much do you take back to your studio to finish?
A: I tend to sketch in notebooks and take pictures and make written notes. I do finished work back in the studio, most of the time. Otherwise I would have to cart all kinds of stuff and it is an entirely different process.
Q: Untrodden Grapes opens in Chile's Atacama Desert—where you left off in The Grapes of Ralph (Harcourt 1996)—and you and your wife, Anna, traverse through Spain, Italy, South Africa, and other wine regions. During these travels, who or what left the biggest impression on you?
A: Mostly the weather. It was either too bloody hot, pissing with rain, or I suffered exhaustion from struggling over rocks, nooks, and crannies. And everyone wants to show me their new bottling lines. The only bottling line that I found interesting was in Bolinas, California, at the winery of Sean Thackrey (Orion Wines). The other one I designed myself as though it were designed by Leonardo da Vinci (hand-cranked and fun). After that, I swore never to draw another. The Leonardo bottling line incidentally is in The Grapes of Ralph.
Q: You created your first wine label for your own "particularly potent" home-brewed "evil concoction" that was made from boiled rice. Since then, you've produced labels for winemakers including Oddbins, Falcon & Hippo Winery, and Bonny Doon Vineyard—home to the notorious Cardinal Zin label, which was banned in Ohio for religious reasons. What factors do you consider when designing wine labels?
A: Provocation and art. Subtlety and humor. Pride and prejudice.
Q: In 1957, you bought your first bottle of wine in Rosas, Spain. What's your wine of choice today?
A: We tend to prefer whites. Chilean Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier from the Southern Rhone and Laguedoc, whites from Clos d'Yvigne in Bergerac, the elegant dry whites of Patricia Atkinson, an oaky dry white she calls Clos Nicholas and a lighter unoaked called Princesse de Cleves. I have some Meursault and Puligny-Montracher laid down, but I gave up collecting really expensive wines simply because two burglaries put me off keeping the bottles for their own sake. They took all the wines that were signed and given to me by wonderful winemakers worldwide. It damn near broke my heart. If I have a red it is usually something chunky like a Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon, and their stupendous Montes Folly Shiraz. Spanish Tempranillo always pleases me, and I usually buy a trio of them if something reminds me of our time in Spain. If it's Italian I like, a Pinot Grigio and down in Puglia I have a soft spot for a really rough local wine called Primitivo.
Q: How's your wine making in England progressing?
A: I make Gurwertstraminer from juice and Sauvignon Blanc of course. When my own vineyard was up and running, I managed Schonburger and a German varietal of Pinot Noir called Spatburgunder. I no longer have the time to tend a vineyard and what is left of it mocks my timid spirit. I once paid a visit to Covent Garden at 3 a.m. and purchased a carload of Pinot Noir. By the time I had got it all home, the car was full of vinegar flies. I find that the best and safest way to make wine now is to use 40 litre glass containers, concentrated juice, rainwater, yeast. Don't open it until fermentation is complete. After the gloops and the odd shake to release any trapped carbon dioxide, stabilize it. Avoid continually opening it to test the specific gravity with a hydrometer. Stop trying to pretend you are a chemical wizard. Let it be. Watch it clear, then just once, smell it, close it, let it go through its malo-lactic fermentation and then wait again. God speaks to me, just like he speaks to the president of the United States, and then he whispers—only whispers, mind—Drink this in remembrance of me. This is my blood—I know that in your case, it's white, but I warned you about that. Now leave it another two months then go for it. Trust me. It will be great! Then I bottle it and love corking it with a nineteenth-century corker I bought ten years ago for a song. I love corking wine. Very satisfying. If I hadn't become an artist, I would have been a corker. Unfortunately, it is all done automatically now and all that bullshit about carefully watching over it, blending and extracting the length and breadth of the grape and perfecting its finish, forget it. It did it to itself! French peasants have made the nectar for hundreds of years and they still do. If someone is describing the notes of raspberry, wide swathes of apricot vapors, and pomegranate overtones—and they are wearing a suit—then pour your glass of whatever over them and say, "Appreciate that!"
Q: During your many years of depicting people, places, and ideas, what's been the most interesting reaction to your art?
A: Enthusiasm, silence, incomprehension, showing me their art, and asking for my signature.
Q:What challenges you more, writing or painting?
A: Both. When I am writing, I feel that I should be drawing. When I am drawing I am filled with a dread that in mid drawing I cannot finish it and I can never draw again.
Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Ralph Steadman.
Used with permission. All rights reserved.
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BONUS MATERIAL
• Main Page
• Interview
• Extended Biography
• Look Inside the Book
• Read an Excerpt
• Table of Contents
• Author Web site 
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