Wine of the Week
iT was cold lager beer, quite rightly, with the luncheon curry at our High Commissioner's hospitable board in Karachi last week, but in the evening, with a European-style dinner, it was a. charmingly light, soft claret, and one that I hadn't come across before—a Leoville-Barton, 1954. The years 1952 and 1953 in Bordeaux were so immediately impressive that the 1954s were hardly bought at all by English shippers --especially as it was soon clear that the 1955s would be so good. Yet there are always good wines made in 'off' years (1 have mentioned the 1956 Château Palmer here more than once), and Ronald Barton of Ldoville made a charmer in 1954—light indeed, as I have said, which made it just the sort of claret for drinking in a hot climate, and which also makes it attractive for summer drinking here. There are very few 1954s about in England (Peter Dominic of Horsham has some first growths and Harveys have a Lynch-Bages) and only Christophers of Jermyn Street that I know of have the Ldoville-Barton, at 18s. 6d. As a claret-shipper observed the other day, claret is a light wine, not an imitation bur- gundy, and this seemed to me a model of what a light claret should be.
C. R.
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