THE DISCREET WINE-DRINKER.* Is Mr. Saintsbury in his delightful little
Notes on a Cellar Book gave us the scholarship of wine-drinking, Mr. W. J. Todd gives us the practice. There is, however, a lyric exultation in the scents and flavours and colours of wine which is common to both writers. Mr. Todd, being a wine merchant, knows all that there is to know about wine, but he has refrained from giving us a history of it from Noah onwards. There is no padding, no irrelevant anecdotage for the purpose of bringing in illustrations of the ehdteaux where the wine is produced. The wine itself is good enough for him. The only illustra- tions in the book are of wine-glasses, decanters and cork- screws. The shape of a wine-glass is notoriously important ! It depends upon whether you want the bouquet of the wine to come at you concentrated or dispersed—out of a rifle or a scatter-gun.
Nor does Mr. Todd bury his readers under drifts of technical details. He could an' he would, as he hints here and there, have told us all about ferments, enzymes, saccharomyeetes ; but we understand that he prefers to forget these things when he is drinking wine, and in effect he advises his readers not to bother about them either. The present writer was once told by a distinguished musician that he knew so much about music that it was impossible for him to enjoy a concert. If there is any danger of this blasting effect of knowledge in the case of a wine-drinker, he had certainly better not look up the meaning of endrotryptase, hexosephosphatase, or carboxylase in the Oxford Dictionary. Mr. Todd's object is to convey to the reader just enough information and no more to make him appreciate the points of a good wine. After all, the man who understands nothing, whoa does not appreciate the meaning of the crust in an old bottle, or who cannot distinguish between the kingly greatness of Burgundy and the queenly delicacy of claret, or who cannot savour silken qualities and drifting fragrances is unworthy to drink good wine.
The late Mr. G. W. E. Russell told the present writer of an experience he had when an undergraduate at Oxford. It was a memorable example of jealous guardianship on the part of the owner of a particularly good cellar. The owner of this cellar asked three undergraduates to dine with him, and after dinner a bottle of claret of an exceptional vintage was placed before them. The host, who was suffering from gout, did not drink that night. The guests, immedi- ately they tasted the wine which the host had done them the unusual honour of offering to them, noticed that there was something wrong. The taste was odd, the smell was worse. After some minutes of agonizing doubt Mr. Russell said to his host : " I am sure you would like me to tell you, as I see that you are not drinking yourself, that this wine is a little corked." The host graciously replied that Mr. Russell had done quite the right thing in telling him.. He was, in fact, very grateful to him—some young men would not have had so much good sense. Then he added : " Will you please ring the bell ? " In response to the bell the butler appeared, whereupon to the astonish- ment of the guests the host gave the laconic order, " Coffee, please." The host had determined to give the young men a bottle of his best claret, perhaps wondering within himself whether they were really worthy of it ; but when the bottle turned out to be a bad one, he was not going to give them another. It was the fortune of war, and the luck that night happened to be against them.
If drinking were universally regarded as an art there would be no need of Prohibition. The people of France come nearer, perhaps, than any other nation to the ideal, and there is less chance of Prohibition being adopted in France than in any other country. The drinking of the true wine-drinker is contemplative. He sips, he meditates, he sips again, he revolves the glass, he watches the wine clinging to the side, he
• A Handbook of Wine : How to Brij, Sera{, Store and Drink It. By W J. Todd. Jonathan Cape. (5,. net.
notes the colour, he holds it up to the light. When he has had enough he would not desecrate the occasion by drinking more for he knows exactly when the " margin of utility," as the economists say, has been reached. The craving for the burning satisfaction of spirits is a different kind of drinking altogether.
America arrived first at Prohibition because the contem- plative drinking of wine is very little practised in that country. Wine is, let us say, a subjective drink, whisky an objective, If the amount of wine drunk for the mere purpose of drinking, and not as an art, had any beneficent effect upon the quality of the wine produced, our great-grandfathers would have drunk better port wine than we can buy to-day. Mr. Todd is convinced, however, that the reverse is the truth. Doctored and deceiving wines have for the most part, he tells us, dis. appeared from the port wine market. Our great-grand- fathers probably drank something much more meretricious, and drank it thoughtlessly and fast, before they subsided into their historic position under the table. Mr. Gladstone was laying hold of the fringe of psychological truth when he tried to segregate that kind of drinking which was potentially respectable, and put it in the hands of the grocer instead of in those of the publican.
Mr. Todd does not suffer gladly the conceited amateur, who fancies that he can give a valuable judgment upon wine without having ever gone through an apprenticeship. He says that modesty, " even in the expert," is no bad thing, nor even a sign of inadequate knowledge. All the com- plexities- and subleties of the various kinds of wine- are indeed beyond the comprehension of one man. The real expert does not pretend to understand more than one sort. The wine produced on one level of the Cote d'Or differs perceptibly from that of another level. The very weeds in the vineyard affect the quality of the wine. No man can either explain or reproduce the results of particular combinations of soil and climate. If he could the charm would probably be gone. Why, one might as well ask, is there a flavour in the tobacco grown in Vuelta Abajo that cannot be exactly imitated anywhere else ?
Every man has a right to his taste in wine as much as in books or pictures or friends. The vine-slopes of France and the rocky terraces of the Douro provide a bountiful distillation of earth and sun, and a man must choose according as he likes what is• strong and generous, or elusive, or dainty or luscious. British wine merchants are naturally most interested in wines that can be transported to this country, but we wish that someone would tell us: more about some of- those vim du pays, such as are served in jugs in French or Spanish or Italian wayside-inns. They are very " rough," no doubt, but they are interesting, not to say romantic, because they seem to taste of the very hills and valleys which produce them.
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