Sir Brandon Rhys-Williams, the late Conservative MP for Kensington and Chelsea, was a studious man and something of a tax expert. He toiled for long hours in the Commons library, and some of the fruitier issues of the day almost passed him by entirely. "Who is this Cynthia, Madame Sin or whatever she's called?" he is said to have asked a colleague. On being informed that one could have the run of Madame Payne's brothel and a three-course meal with wine for just £25, Sir Brandon seemed horrified: "The wine can't be up to much."
It's a question of taste, you might say. I am on Sir Brandon's side: I prefer food and drink to almost anything, and certainly to liaisons with unspecified members of the opposite sex. This week, the newspaper I work for has asked me to follow Jennifer Aniston's diet, which means consuming no alcohol (unless at the expense of a precious food allowance) and eating plate after plate of vegetables and meat in specially weighed out portions that I have neither the time nor the spirit to devise into tasty recipes. As a result, writing this column and thinking of all I'm missing is sheer torture. I haven't yet reached the stage of desperation where I open bottles in my own house, swill the wine and spit it out, but I'm close.
Perhaps the reward will come at the end of the week, when my deprived taste buds will be acutely receptive to whatever I give them. It's certainly true that if you avoid flavours for a while, you later taste them more keenly. The chef Heston Blumenthal once told me that one of his kitchen workers routinely overseasoned the pea puree. Blumenthal made him cut salt out of his diet for a week and, after that, his tasting was perfectly attuned to that of his co-chefs.
Tasting wine is surely similar, which is partly why people develop palates that prefer certain kinds of wine. If you like tannins, for example, your taste for them could get out of hand as you become increasingly immune to the drying of your gums. And you will notice their absence when you approach a rare Beaujolais. This is one reason why, if you're tasting half a dozen wines, it's fun to go back to the beginning and see how the flavours of which you may have been uncertain now seem to leap out of the glass. With practice, it's possible to train your taste buds to distinguish between flavours that at first may barely seem to be differentiable from each other.
Over the summer, I went to several tastings at a local branch of the wine merchant Corney & Barrow. They were mostly attended by the same bunch of amateur winos, whose taste buds seemed to become more finely tuned over the weeks. I took my boss to one, a champagne tasting, at which we sampled the terrifically expensive Louis Roederer Cristal, as well as Salon, considered by many to be the world's greatest champagne. He insisted he liked the (cheaper) Dom Perignon, which he always drinks, best. He also guarded his tasting notes very carefully, accusing me of trying to copy him, but it later turned out that this was because he had written "very quaffable" against all the champagnes.
This is a good time of year to indulge a yen to learn more about wine. If a formal course (I recommend those at the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, wset.co.uk, for those in London) doesn't appeal, then many wine merchants have organised tastings these days, free or otherwise. Just ask around.
Wine buffs - and your local merchant is sure to be staffed by several - love to bore on about wine and, if you give them half a chance, will gladly pin you against the autumn wine display as they explain the difference between French and American oak. More specifically, there's an excellent tasting opportunity for Londoners (I apologise for being so south-east-centric) on Monday 24 September. The Bunch event is organised by six wine merchants, who will each show six wines and be on hand to chat about them as you wander around the hall refilling your glass. It's at the Great Hall, One Great George Street, London SW1, from 5.30pm-8.30pm. Tickets cost £40 for a double and £25 for a single. For tickets and information, contact 01502 727274.
