With a motorbike mishap in France, Roger Scruton discovered a lesser-known white wine
I first came to understand the rottenness of British industry in 1966, when I was in the habit of travelling the French countryside on a 500cc AJS motorbike, my only possession. Everywhere I went, this machine was caressed by admiring hands and eyes, and there was not a gars du village who wouldn't have exchanged his mother for its like.
But no British motorcycles were on sale in that wide-open market, no manufacturer had opened an office or taken out an advert, and not a spare part was to be had anywhere. When the front tyre split near Libourne in the Dordogne, I was forced to leave the bike in a garage, and return to England for a tyre.
Having been told that there were no trains until the morning, I settled with my sleeping bag under a tree. In the neighbouring field, in the last rays of the sun, a farmer was working, and he came across to inquire what I was up to. My story must have touched him, for he came back an hour later carrying bread, pâté and a bottle of wine: Entre-Deux-Mers, he explained, from his neighbour's newly rescued vineyard, and he swore it was the equal of any white wine in the world, now that the vines had been replanted.
The partiality of the true patriot always persuades me, and I eagerly set out to confirm the judgement. On that calm summer night outside the village of Vayres, with the Dordogne River glinting in the distance and a heart full of gratitude, I was easily converted to this wine, which I had known previously only as the cheapest white in the Jesus College buttery.
What I did not know, however, was that Vayres is not a white-wine village at all, but the centre of a district that has been known since the 19th century for its reds, and was allowed its own appellation in 1931. Not to be confused with the more famous Graves on the left bank of the Garonne, Graves de Vayres produces full, flavoursome wines, rich in minerals from the gravelly soil that is acknowledged in its name. The Château Belair 2001 on offer from Corney & Barrow is an excellent example of the appellation. This Cabernet-based wine is full of character, with bright minerals shining through its canopy of fruit, and a hint of iron and leather, like the wine in which Sancho Panza detected the taint of a bunch of keys. Five years in the bottle have smoothed away the rough edges without destroying its robust peasant virtues.
Impossible to confuse with the velvety wines of Graves proper, it is made for big, rough dinners, such as the leftover bits of pork from our farmers' party. These, mixed with slimy beans and perked up with pepper, went roaring down the tube ahead of this cheerful potion, just as I had roared through the vineyards that produced it all those years ago.
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