UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Bottled
By PETER UNWIN (Christ Church, Oxford) HE idea occurred, in Solihull of all places, to a beer- drinker and a tomato-juice enthusiast who were drinking tea together. The impracticable magazines were full of ideas of " bottle your own wine," as sensible, it seemed at first, as " knit your own battleship." But the idea was attractive— the beer-drinker fell for the glamour of it all—and the first letters were written. The replies came in from the chateaux, one from an old gentleman who wanted us to follow in the foot- steps of Joan of Arc by buying his cheap Burgundy; the mythi- cal traditionalism of Oxford obviously dies hard in provincial France.
While complicated financial deals with the Credit Lyonnais were going through, recruiting started. The nature of the Scheme made it advisable to by-pass the university proctors by limiting the membership to one college. The club finally evolved as a purely Christ Church organisation, twenty-one strong, calling itself on its ambitious correspondence-cards " The Vintners of Christ Church." With a name like that we were glad we had excluded Keble. The ties, like the correspondence-cards, were vainglorious, but they too were intended to give the club status. Varying ideas were canvassed, and the club aesthete spent an afternoon in the Ashmolean Museum examining Greek goblets for use as pos- sible models. Finally a golden barrel on a red tie was chosen; the red would have been symbolic, but we discovered that the problem of bottle-sickness would force us to choose white wine. The ties were the last capital assets to arrive, long after the first barrel had been broached and drunk. The story went round Peckwater that the makers had sabotaged them in Cambridge.
At the end of the Hilary term, then, the Vintners had a bank- balance. Our assets were twenty-one subscriptions of three guineas a head and the correspondence-cards; our liabilities amounted to a slowly approaching barrel—still to be paid for— and festoons of red ties to strangle our dreams. We signed cheques and translated them into francs; we looked for some- where to put the barrel when it arrived; and we thought about the bottles we had first to find and then to wash before we broached the barrel.
Trinity term was a hectic one, and our members were grow- ing thirstier. The professionals warned us that if the barrel was still en route during May it would contain vinegar when it arrived. Then there was a letter from the agents, which went incomprehensibly and unfortunately to the Dean, to tell us the barrel was at last in London.
It was then that apparently irremediable disaster struck us down.' We had based our calculations on a half-barrel; we had promised our members six bottles a head. When it arrived we found that we had bought a quarter-barrel. The arithmetic was in order. The reasoning was flawless, but the premise was at fault. Our barrel was half the size we had expected. All revolutions are crises of confidence, we of the founder-clique told ourselves; it was only necessary to remain calm. We found we knew all the axioms about revolution, even the remark that the machine-gun had made it obsolete. At one stage we misquoted Napoleon : " You can do nothing with a quarter- barrel except sit on it." As yet the mob was quiet; the story was still a close secret. We watched and wondered in the rain, and pondered solutions over chocolate cake. We found a solution to the problem in time; after it all others seemed minor ones. The solution was compromise; we exchanged our quarter-barrel of Rully for a half-barrel of Bergerac, and the mob was none the wiser, though they may be angry if ever they read this article. They were happy with Bordeaux, became merry on it at the club dinner, climbed out of the House in their dinner jackets afterwards and followed each other round in solemn procession on a merry-go-round at a fair. After that, the Vintners were established. Now we look with benevolence on our imitators, and give them hints on siphoning. We have solved our problems and understand the whole opera- tion, from the cheque to the Credit Lyonnais to the corking- machine in the coal-cellar where bottling now takes place. The procedure is simple and, until the barrel reaches us, uninterest- ing. The Customs sample our Bergerac; the agents forward it from London; and we establish the barrel well above ground- level on blocks. It remains there for a good fortnight while the coal-dust settles and we collect the bottles to be used. On B-day a team (still very much the ruling founder-clique, for the rest are ever writing essays) assembles in the cellar. There is no uniform. Some affect handkerchiefs to absorb the sweat; some seek comfort in shirt-sleeves. With care the bung is removed and the glass-and-rubber-tube siphon set up. The bottles are massed in rows, and the siphon started. As the wine-level rises to the neck the rubber-tube is nipped; an empty bottle is moved into place, and the full one goes into the crate for the corker.
He works at the other end of the cellar, with the intense look of a naval-gunner in his eyes. To the initiated the corking- machine has affinities with a gun breech, though perhaps it is more apt to compare it with a pop-gun. Speed in corking is in theory a question of deftness of hand and wrist, the downward thrust with the right hand and the quick flick back with the left, preparing the machine for the next cork. In practice we find corking as much a question of brute strength and deter- mination as of skill. The cork—pre-heated in boiling water and then dipped in wine—should be soft and pliable. Boiling water, however, is at a discount in a coal-cellar; corking becomes a question of force, and the corker develops callouses and muscles in a day.
Bottling must be a continuous process; to take a night's sleep before dealing with the last few dozen is to come back to vinegar. In fact, however, the spell is strong, and things outside lose their importance. The mesmeric necessity of main- taining an unbroken line of bottles, coupled with the inebriating effect of alcohol fumes, keeps even sweated labour contented. A strange and mystic professionalism develops; the knack of nipping the siphon at the right moment becomes a jealously- guarded art for the initiate, and the rare efficient corker is as proud of his scars as a boy with a black eye. Outsiders—until they too become absorbed in the rites—are resented; thrust roughly out of the way as interruptions in the scheme of things. The production-line mentality takes us all in its grip. The unforgivable sin, the joke we all know and have all perpetrated in our time, is the old one about the bottle-neck.
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