Wine' of the Week 1 3 121.11S11 RAILWAYS (I discovered last
week on the Torbay Express) have put up the price of their anonymous, blended, non-vintage regional wines-Medoc, Graves, Macon• and vin rosé- from an impudent I 5s. to an insolent I 7s. They are worth every penny of 8s. a bottle retail, and must cost British Railways considerably less than that. A cra classe claret that is quite good for an 'off' year-Palmer 1956--which 1 wrote about last December when it was 22s. 6d. a bottle, is now 25s. (it is still 13s. 6d. at the pub and grill round the corner from this office, and served at the table, at that). I am glad to see; though, that they no longer print on the restaurant-car wine list that phrase about 'the interesting wines offered at prices as reasonable as any you will find in this country.' Impudence has its limits, even for British Railways. My wine of the week is the quarter-bottle of Perrier-Jouet that British Railways serve at 11s., which seems much more reasonable than the table wines: it is 7s. I Id. in the shops. Perrier- Jouit is a clean, crisp champagne, and a couple of mouthfuls help to reconcile one to the restaucant-car food to come. I wish more hotels and restaurants served good champagne in quarter-bottles, for the sake of the solitary diner, and this must be the first time in my life I have ever held up Brit:sh Raik‘ays as an example to be copied.
CYRIL RAY
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