Drink
If we are the nation of sophisticates we believe ourselves to be, then why is Comic Relief holding a blind(folded) tasting to see whether the masses can distinguish red wine from white? Because most of us have palates that would disgrace a chain-smoking navvy. In restaurants we affect to taste the wine before allowing the sommelier to pour it, though few can recognise, let alone dare to complain, when a bottle is corked. Ask any wine merchant and he will sigh and confirm that, having no real tastes to speak of, we choose bottles lemming-fashion. Cloudy Bay one year, Clare Valley the next.
Nevertheless, the trade selflessly makes a gargantuan effort to offer the very best. And, believe me, wine-tasting is no bowl of cherries. I am at Francis Stickney Agencies' spring wine-tasting at the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, glass in hand, on the prowl. Though we are drinking (well, swilling) before elevenses, the occasion could not be further removed from the Dionysian debauchery you might expect given that there are 110 different bottles of wine here, from rare and expensive Bordeaux to elegant champagnes. All of them are open, a glass each for the asking. I scarcely know where to begin.
Everyone else is terribly methodical. Wine may be their passion but business is the order of the day. The room is awash with the pristine suits of wine merchants, producers, sommeliers and buyers from leading hotels and restaurants (almost all of them men, all of them terribly nice).
Many of them know each other (there is a tasting circuit). I find some reminiscing over the Australians about last year's trip down under and how much better it was to drink Barossa Valley's wines on their own soil under a periwinkle-blue sky. They go steadily through the list, working the wine around the mouth, spitting with practised aim (I dribble down my chin) and making rapid, informed decisions.
I am full of admiration for the way these professionals memorise and file flavours away for future reference. (Though one admits that agency tasting is more difficult than tasting by country when, trying like against like, it is easier to identify, for example, the best of 150 New Zealand sauvignon blancs.)
My own palate begins to falter after the first five glasses. Imagine it. The assault on the senses, the tingling of the tastebuds as they respond to each different flavour, not to mention the cumulative effect of taking several great snorts of the alcohol-rich vapours when enjoying the bouquet. How the brain begins to rebel after a few violently different and insistent flavours have swamped the synapses.
A charming man directs me towards the red Bordeaux. They are, he warns, very hard work. But worth it. He is right. I go slowly through the five assembled vintages of Chateau Beychevelle, fourth-growth St Julien, beginning with the 1997 (wonderfully fruity with a sort of enveloping bouquet) and ending with the 1989 (which tastes virtually flawless, somehow).
"Foul stuff," I hear someone snipe under their breath at an unknown specimen. Myself, I enjoy the Grant Burge, Barossa Valley 1995 Meshach Shiraz, which is an excellent, huge fruity wine and, sadly, another fashion victim. Anyone investing in an earlier vintage would have done well.
By the end of three hours and only a third of my way through the list, I am utterly exhausted. "Ah, I'm getting a bit jaded now," remarks one gentleman, confessing, "the odd drop has started to slip down my throat. Do you find that?" I do.
There are some wonderful wines here, and I bow to the tenacity and diligence of these buyers sacrificing their time to provide for we beasts. But no one should leave a tasting without a tasty morsel to recommend. Mine is the Chateau Vary sauvignon blanc, Cote de Duras, which is a cheeky little white table wine - light and floral with a good gooseberry nose. Even beasties should recognise its value.
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