Drink
Mum is here. She came unexpectedly, and Dad has already called to ask where his tea is. And he has called again to say that he's eaten the fish and the potatoes but he didn't have any vegetables. Mum puts the phone down. "Well, I don't know what potatoes he ate," she says, innocent of any sympathy, "because the only ones we had were bright green."
I think she had better have a drink, just in case she is conned into dashing to King's Cross to get home in time to be up with the sparrows, slicing bread and hacking into corned beef for tomorrow's round of packed lunches. Luckily, tucked among the abandoned corpses of Pineau de Charentes (summer went) and bottled lager (the football season ended) in my fridge, I have just the thing to make Mum naughty: Devil's Lair chardonnay 1997.
It was given to me recently by a well-known Fleet Street journalist, who claims that the soil of Western Australia produces mind-blowing wines. The terrible, fatal addiction all began when his wife went for dinner at Quaglino's. She returned drunker, and higher, than he had ever seen her before. "What have you been drinking?" he asked her. She had no idea. The saga was repeated twice, by which time my friend had become so curious that he phoned the restaurant and demanded to be told what his wife had drunk with her dinner.
The answer was Mad Fish chardonnay, from the Howard Park winery, in the town of Denmark. This is a wine I have heard much about. A trendy west London cafe tells me their customers ask for nothing else, though they serve only Mad Fish pinot noir. Even this did not make it into any customer's glass for at least three weeks, because the waiters were drinking the cellar dry of it. "And getting slaughtered. It's incredible stuff."
My Fleet Street friend is concerned, however, that Mad Fish is not as mad as it used to be, so he has bought me the increasingly popular Devil's Lair, from Margaret River, just round the coast from Denmark. "It's like liquid cocaine," he promises. I wonder what Mum will make of it.
We swill it round our glasses. I am told it should have "powerful grapefruit, honey and toast flavours". Mum takes a sip. "I'm going to do it without swallowing, like the proper wine-tasters do," she announces through the corner of her mouth. "I've never done that before."
I feel quite anxious. The whole point is that she swallows. "Do you think," she gargles on, "that you still get that third taste, the different one that comes from the back of your throat, even if you don't swallow?"
"Perhaps if you swill it round your gums," I suggest weakly, thinking of coca leaves and how, if you chew them, you supposedly get a small high. It never worked for me; I didn't even lose sensation in my tongue.
"I've never done that before; I'm going to try it," she threatens. I feel still more nervous when, spitting expertly into the sink, she pronounces with the authority of one raised on fermented grape juice, not Ovaltine.
"Vanilla, some pear drops and a flash of aniseed ball," she says imaginatively. I may have pushed her into the aniseed by suggesting liquorice.
But no, she is changing her mind. "It's not aniseed ball. More those little plants with seed-heads that release scent when you knock them. You know, there are some by the stream in Arncliffe." I have no idea what she is talking about. "It's like tasting a smell, not tasting a taste," she continues. I think we should taste more tastes; I pour our second glasses.
It's very oaky but so delicious I forget my old prejudice. Mum, by now, is looking decidedly giddy. The telephone rings again. It is my brother. "Do we need to get the bread rolls out of the freezer for our lunch?" he asks.
"If you want them to be defrosted when you eat them, I suppose you could do," says Mum. There is a satanic look in her eye.
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