Consuming Interest
The Battle of the Bottle
By LESIE:114: ADRIAN An expensive Soho restaurant marks as chateau-bottled clarets some that have been bottled in Bordeaux. Subtle, but teetering on the edge of honesty. Others too numerous to name serve carafe wines called Chablis or Macon that are recognisably neither. Still others both in central London and on the periphery have wine lists that are an insult to the intelligence. I mentioned one of these in this column a year ago, where the restaarant manager had told me that his customers were not as fussy as I. They wanted cheap wine and he gave it to them, at 25s. a bottle, and called anything from Margaux to Volnay, as long as they could pronounce it and remember to be impressed.
That's the shady side. But on the careless, I have had claret so cold that it could have been iced (in hotels and pubs in and around the capital); hock so warm you could have shaved in' it; and sediment in the bottom of my glass so
thick you could have distilled a good marc from it. Which is why I seldom drink an expensive wine out, and why I was impressed with the care taken at Wolfe's.
I have had a sommelier, so-called, flourish a vintage claret in my face like a cocktail shaker, before popping it into a decanting basket and slopping it, sediment and all, into my glass (admittedly this was in Llandudno). I have had white wine served to me in an ice bucket contain- ing nothing but tepid water (admittedly on a hot night in Charlotte Street). I have sent back a wine only to receive in return the same bottle topped up with new wine not containing the evil sludge that had dropped into my glass. I have even had a• restaurant proprietor try to tell me that a corked Beaujolais was 'typical,' after he had filled four glasses without offering anyone a chance even to sniff it. No names, no pack-drill, and likewise no
writs, but I have a good enough memory. •
Mr. Denes may be right, that our wine lists and. our service are better than those found in continental countries. For some odd reason I have not brought back with me from a recent visit such an impression, although it does rather depend upon which part of the Continent one is thinking about. The only countries where the care of wine at the table is really decisive would appear to be France and Portugal, and even there one is apt to find the careless or indifferent, resta urateur , or sommelier.
To return to our own country, I must confess to being appalled at the implication by the Daily Mail's Charles Greville that the tasting of wine at the table is intended to smoke out 'wine fiddles.' All that the diner is doing in inspecting the' wine is checking that there has been no confusion in his order and that the wine is healthy. The Mail pictured the secretary of the Guild. of Somineliers studying the opening of a bottle. But they 'missed" out the most crucial test: the inspection a the cork.
The name burnt into the cork, even if it is not chateau- or estate-bottled, may reveal vital information. And the condition of the cork, its moisture, odour and colour, will help to confirm the age and condition of the wine offered.
As to the 'fiddles' described by Greville in the Mail and Observer in the Financial times (the use of dregs to top up bottles, the substitution of inferior wines for better using the original empties). these are time-honoured tricks canonised by George Orwell and Thomas Mann, and pre- valent mainly, if not exclusively, at banquets. The individual diner-out who drinks wine can look after himself. But not if he is half-asleep after listening to a lullaby about the integrity of restaurateurs and the skill of sommeliers.
Cellarless wine fanciers will welcome the enter- prise Of the Directors Wine Club in opening a 'wine bank.' For a small regular sum members of the Club may now buy, and have laid down and cared for, vintage clarets, Burgundies and ports. Morgan Furze have undertaken not only to do this (which is a hedge against inflation and the rising demand for gobd wines) but to report to participants about the condition of their wine from time to time so that they may know when it is ready or verging towards decline. First selections for laying down will be made next month. The DWC lives at 31 Berkeley Street, London, WI (MAYfair 1075). Surely it ought to qualify, like mortgages and insurance premittn s, for tax relief.
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