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WINE AND ME (2): CASE HISTORIES

BRUCE PALLING | UNCORKED | January 21st 2008

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In the second part of his wine-drinking memoir (see part one here), Bruce follows his palate from Saigon to London by way of Salisbury, Rhodesia, and declares the present time a golden age for claret ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

A year after the fall of Saigon I decided it was time to go elsewhere to
commit journalism. Besides, I was tiring of the paucity of decent wine in
Bangkok and the tendency of people there to assume that any Bordeaux with
the words "La Tour" or a drawing of a tower splashed across the label was
Chateau Latour.

You might think it bizarre that my next workplace was Rhodesia, not a
country renowned then or now for its wine. But at that stage of my career I
had to chase the news to pay the bills.

I managed an interlude in Paris staying with my leftist friends, long enough
to explore the wine options at places such as Nicolas. I was all at sea when
it came to vintages, but Edmund Penning-Rowsell's "Wines of Bordeaux" had
taught me to recognise the leading growths by appearance, if nothing else.

On a first foray into a fine-wine section I bought £50-worth of bottles,
including names that became lifelong friends: Cos d'Estournel, Domaine de
Chevalier, Latour and Ducru-Beaucaillou. None cost more than £5. They were
mostly lesser 1960s vintages--'64, '67, '69--but still the best wine I had
drunk. (I confess the Latour was '68, one of the worst vintages of that era;
but being a well-structured sort of wine it showed what it could be capable
of).

I went on to London, armed with a chequing account at the Banque de
L'Indochine and letters of introduction from my friendly spy to
Christopher's and Justerini's.

Christopher's was a coal scuttle of a place just off St James's with a proud
tradition:

"In fact, sir, we are the oldest wine merchant to occupy the same
premises in London."

"I seeso how long have you been here?"

"Since the Fire."

They weren't to last much longer, as it happened. But they introduced me to
the joys of very fine wine indeed--mainly '59 clarets, which were then
assertive teenagers, more rounded and decadent (and somewhat cheaper) than
the flashier 61s. And they were kind enough to decant.

Not knowing what to expect in Rhodesia, I took a few bottles with me,
including Cos '59 and Latour '57 (another pretty nasty vintage). These
quickly went, and, what with sanctions, and, perhaps more importantly, the
local culture, the only European wine readily available was Portuguese Dão
smuggled in from neighbouring Mozambiquethin stuff, that made a passable
stab at being drinkable.

David Monniaux/Wikimedia Commons

Given the rogue nature of the white minority regime (accurately described by
one writer as "Surrey with a lunatic fringe on top"), the only other wines
available were South African, from fellow-racists happy to defy
international sanctions.

A nascent local wine industry offered "White Table Wine" and "Red Table
Wine" for something like £2 a bottle. On a quiet news day I went to a
wine-tasting in Salisbury and buttonholed a producer:

"Please tell me how you manage to make such dreadful red wine. It is so
abrasive that we use it to clean copper in our kitchen."

"Is this off the record?"

I nodded.

"Well, it started off white".

The purplish colouring, apparently, came from the addition of tiny amounts
of potassium permanganate, which I later read can be used to induce
abortions.

For reasons of health and taste I started bidding at Christie's wine
auctions in London over a news-agency telex. I stocked up on some relative
bargains, mainly from Bordeaux. It was only later, when I dropped by
Christie's offices in St James's, that I discovered I had been breaking UN
sanctions merely by ordering from Rhodesia. We thought it best not to make a
fuss.

As an antidote to life in Salisbury I planned a small picnic with six of the
best wines money could buy. Christopher's found for me a bottle of Yquem '67
(the greatest post-war pudding wine); a bottle of '66 Louis Roederer
Cristal; and a magnum apiece of Margaux '59 and Latour '59. OK, that was 30
years ago, but if you tried to purchase the exact same wines today, they
would set you back more than £9,000, or 150 times the £60 they cost me.

I returned to London in 1977, a golden age for claret-buying. Even '59 and
'61 first-growths were readily available for around £100 a case. Any of the
super-seconds, such as Cos, Léoville Lascases, Palmer or La Mission-Haut
Brion could be yours for £40 a case. At the Mecca of serious wine drinkers,
the Tate Gallery restaurant, a heavenly '62 Cos was all of £4.50 a bottle.
The best white Burgundy, Le Montrachet, cost less than £10. Even Pétrus was
around £25 a bottle.

It is important not to be obsessed with this ultimate tier of wines; ­
pleasure can come from the most extraordinary bottles ­ and places. In late
1977 I managed to get a visa into Albania, then at the height of its
paranoid rule by a clutch of aged Stalinists. Most of the annual budget went
into making tens of thousands of mushroomed-shaped "pillbox" defence posts to resist invasion.

During our two week stay, the dreariness of the country
was considerably alleviated by the company of a beautiful
Zurich lawyer who was as sceptical as me about this peasant paradise. The
local wine was execrableuntil the last night, at an official dinner,
when suddenly some bottles of 1963 "Pinot Noir" appeared, which were strangely
reminiscent of a lesser Pauillac such as Haut-Batailley. They were so good I
managed to stow away an extra two bottles to take home. Perhaps it was a little
unfair but a month or two later I opened them when my new friend from Zurich
was staying and we were having some Margaux and Mouton. What a mistake. Both
bottles were dreadful ­ tart, acidic and utterly deflating. As Robert Parker
once remarked, you must always remember what he terms the "sunset in
Provence" factor when drinking wine.

Fortunately, London could still provide an opportunity unparallelled in the
Universe to drink amazing wine. Among the highlights were the lunches given
by the grand wine merchantsoccasions at which it was enough to give at
least the appearance of potential wealth. In my twenties I would attend
fabulous feasts with Pétrus, Cheval Blanc and Latour, stretching on into
early evening.

Thirty years on, when my knowledge and love of such wines is much greater, I
see them much less. A more calculating approach to wealth in Britain means
that such treasures are poured in public only at massively expensive charity
events. Cruelbut I can't complain. Finding and enjoying great wines has
always been a question of luck and timing.

Imagine being born around the First World War with only a couple of great
Bordeaux vintages in the 1920s, none in the 1930s, and the 1940s delivering
only after the end of the Second World War. Nor was there much to write home
about in the 1960s, apart from '61 and '66--and no universally great 1970s
vintages spring to mind.

Only starting with the 1980s have we been blessed with consistently greater
wines. Even '81, not considered outstanding, produced one of my favourites
of all timeConseillante '81and '82, '85, '86 and '89 are still capable of
creating life-changing experiences. The 1990s kicked off with a wonderful
'90, and then '95, '96 and '98 for Right Bank and Graves, so I am certain
there will be lots of memoirs cropping up in the future looking back to our
own golden age.

The other burden we currently suffer from is the ban on taking wine bottles
on flights because of fears of Jihadist attacks. I used always to travel
abroad with half a dozen bottles of interesting wine (there is
nothing like drinking a half bottle of Yquem on a deserted island east of
Java). Still, it is possible to discover more interesting wines around the
globe, which only partially makes up for this restriction.

But enough reminiscing. My time, and yours, will be better spent devising
legitimate ways to increase our purchases of '00, '01, '04, and, especially,
'05. We may be facing irretrievable global meltdown and waves of
Islamic-inspired terrorism--but in wine, the best is yet to come.