Special Offer
Wine Club
Auberon Waugh
T am usually reluctant to offer wines at the cheapest end of the market for fear that punters could find them even cheaper at their local cash and carry warehouse; since our prices inevitably include an ele- ment for delivery, they might feel they had not got a bargain. But I have overcome the difficulty on this offer, which is especially designed for penny-pinchers, if not for the poor, by arranging with Oxford's cash and carry warehouse to deliver wine at prices which are lower — where the last three wines are concerned quite considerably lower — than the prices they would have to pay by the case if they turned up at the Botley Works to collect it with a car or wheelbarrow. I only hope that enough Spectator readers will realise they are on a good thing to justify these generous terms from Mr David Stevens, our supplier on this occasion.
The exception to this is the first wine (1) a good, clean poor man's Burgundy, which is already the subject of a bin-end offer at the irreducible price of £1.99 for those with a car or wheelbarrow within striking range of Botley Works. Delivered in John O'Groats or Land's End it costs £2.20. I am sorry about that, but still judged it too cheap to miss. There are only 100 cases available, and better-off punters should
leave it alone. It has the Bourgogne Appellation Control& and is, as I say, a good, clean, light wine with no taste in it but pinot, a decent smell and no chemicals or sugar added. At this price it would be absurd to expect a great wine: by the standards of Burgundy it is thin and while not sharp has slightly more acid than \the fruit justifies — a wine for drinking with a meal, rather than at other times. It won't improve. But when I think of all the cheap wine I drank when I was younger and poorer, this seems exceptionally pure. If you were served it at 30 francs a bottle in a Burgundy tavern you would send silly, drunken postcards to all your friends. But it is a very poor relation of some of the things I have in my cellar in Somerset.
The next, Grand Vernaux Rouge (2), altogether sweeter and richer, is unmistak- ably a blended wine, and none the worse for that. I know a senior editor in Associ- ated Newspapers who has been drinking it by the bucketful for over a year and seems to thrive on it. Grand Vernaux is a brand name of Nodmie Vernaux that have their cellars in Beaune. No doubt quantities of Burgundy's 1982 over-production found their way into this blend, which certainly includes wine from further south, the C6tes du Rhone and Provence. The final taste is similar to some of the excellent '82 and '83 Cotes du Rhone villages I have been finding recently if not quite so con- centrated, and at £2.28 the bottle delivered it is significantly cheaper. A wonderfully genial slurping wine for those who like their wine in unlimited quantities.
Now to Australia, where the best wines are not only very good indeed but still
amazingly cheap. Perhaps I should explain that that the Shiraz in Stanley's 1980 Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon (3) is Australian for `Syrah' the grape of the northern Rhone which gives us St Joseph, Cornas and Crozes Hermitage as well as their aris- tocratic neighbours at Hermitage and C6te 13.6tie. This wine frankly tastes more like the first three than the last two, but it would be an excellent Crozes, or perhaps Jaboulet's St Joseph La Grande Pomp& 1976 — strong, high and pure Syrah. The smell, by contrast, is pure Cabernet Sauvignon, and very high class indeed massive Californian-style blackcurrant with great warmth. Those who like the syrah taste will find it a revelation. Those who don't — or aren't sure they have yet identified it — should be more cautious. Even on my panel there are some who cannot take the farmhouse syrah taste, finding it mean and dull and full of mouse mess. It comes from the Clare Valley, if that means anything to anybody.
There was no holding back on the fourth wine, however, which was greeted with
gasps, cheers and shrieks of delight. Less obviously a 'hot country' wine than my beloved Château Musar from the Leba- non, Leasingham's Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec 1980 (4) reminded me of nothing so much as the Mondavi-Rothschild 'Opus One' (in fact a Cabernet-Merlot blend) launched last year and, according to Hedges and Butler, selling like hot cakes at the ludicrous price of £37.50 a bottle. This wine has a marvellous, knock-out smell, a huge concentration of fruit and enough tannin to ensure it will last for years and years without preventing its being com- pletely delicious already. It must be served at room temperature and in a decent glass, but when one thinks how very little one gets for £5.63 from any classified château in Bordeaux, I begin to feel we should all go and live in Australia. From Bordeaux, as I say, it would be a bargain at £14-£15. At £5.63 it is spectacular.
I include the Henriot champagne (5) because I like it and Mr Stevens agreed to knock £11 a case off the delivered price for Spectator readers. I first met Henriot champagnes at the table of Baron Philippe de Rothschild when he was launching his Opus One venture — he has his own special reserve, called, perhaps not surpri- singly, Reserve de Baron Philippe de Rothschild. Henriot, founded in 1808, was once much more famous than he is now, like Ayala and Billecourt-Salmon — two other bargains, I would judge. The Rus- sians lapped him up. He was kicked out of the tiny band of Grandes Marques in 1930 for carrying his grapes around in a lorry, but I honestly can't taste any petrol fumes — perhaps a pleasing touch of lemon skin. The Souverain is a good, golden colour, very dry but not at all thin. There is no bad champagne made nowadays, just fairly good, good, very good and excellent. It seems to me a very good champagne for the price of a good one.
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