SPECTATOR WINE CLUB
A veritable treasure house
Auberon Waugh
The last offer of the year traditionally goes to Berry Bros, but this year it seems to have gone to El Vino's. It is a sad irony of fate that I began to discover this treasure house of rare, unusual and extraordinarily inexpensive wines only after the newspap- ers' retreat from Fleet Street. As a lad or cub reporter in the Street of Shame I drank nothing but Bollinger Non-Vintage on my visits to that famous wine bar or 'hostelry', as it became. What a waste! Eheu fugaces, as my old friend Wallace (Arnqld, not Edgar — I am not as old as that!) would probably exclaim. The El Vino list is in fact one of the surviving wonders of London. But you have to taste your way through an enormous number of unknown and rather mysterious labels to hit pay-dirt. This has been my humble task, and I am proud of the result.
People will groan at the bald description 'Macon Blanc Villages 1989', but this (1) is a lovely clean, light white burgundy, no- thing sharp or mean, some way beyond apple in the chardonnay spectrum. Fresh, ripe lemons spring to mind, but it is a very full, lemony taste and a good long finish — a bargain at £5.38. You could taste 50 white maconnais, all costing much the
same — some a lot more — without finding one as high-class as this.
Next a premier cru chablis(2) at the much less inviting price of £10.54. I would not dream of offering even a grand cru chablis at this price unless I thought it a revelation. This 1988 is a seriously excellent wine — possibly as a result of the Greenhouse Effect more reminiscent of the ate d'Or than of chablis, it has honey, melon and cream on the nose overwhelmed by the true chablis touch of sweet hay. One member of the panel even found unripe bananas in the middle taste, but all raved about it. I am sorry about the price. Eheu fugaces! For those who can afford it — it is a taste of heaven.
I will not, myself, be ordering any of the Communard Bordeaux Rouge(i) even at its extraordinarily cheap price of £3.38 the bottle, because it is not my style of claret, but it was tremendously popular last year and has always been the staple of El Vino's tipple of left-wingers, who actually prefer it to anything more expensive. It has nothing hard or sour or over-tannic, and there is no taste of iron — in fact it is smooth, mild and has a good claret smell. But there is something a little dusty there which left- wingers like and I don't. At £3.38 I am sure it will go down brilliantly in Hampstead, and might be convenient as a dye for any People's Flags left lying around. El Vino's Sir David Mitchell describes it as a 'blood red party claret' without necessarily spe- cifying which party. Next, an altogether more conventional and, I think, better wine which, at £4.17, manages to start with a strange smell 04f) gunpowder. The Chateau Verdelet 1986( 'Yeah, the light-bulb was put in by David Lynch.' has good smoky fruit and is perfect for drinking now. At this level, it may seem hard to describe except in terms of its lack of disqualifications — nothing stalky, no- thing arid or over-leafy, nothing sulphur- ous or vile — but the simple fact remains that in 1986 Château Verdelet (wherever that may be) produced a thoroughly good, rich, elegant wine which many will con- gratulate you for. Now, two burgundies, one at £7.38(5), the other at £9.86(6). Both have a certain strangeness in their pedigree which accounts for what is, by burgundian stan- dards, truly give-away prices. The first, called 'Reserve de Maitre du Chais', can be sold only as Bourgogne Rouge 1985. This might mean it is the result of over- production; it might mean it comes from the younger vines of a famous vineyard. In my estimation, it might go on improving for five years to reach its peak. But it drinks very well now, and provides an increasingly rare glimpse of what proper burgundy once tasted like. El Vino's non-vintage Chambolle Musigny(6) is an even older phenomenon. It is non-vintage of course, because it is a blend of various vintages — as burgundy always used to be, although in the good old days they stuck on any year which was thought likely to appeal to punters. This is now forbidden, and has resulted in lower standards and higher prices all round. I am delighted to learn that a few negociants still blend their years, and a few English importers are still sensible enough to buy it. This Chambolle, at half the price of single-vintage wine from an indifferent, Specified year, is a splendid example of thick, old-style burgundy. Perhaps it needs a year or two before we can take it totally seriously, but with its touch of cigar smoke on the nose, plums and violets in the mouth, there can be no mistaking a seriously excellent example such as used to be sold, after ten years in the bottle, as a Vougeot '49, a Corton or Chambertin '55 or under any other label which caught the fancy. At under £10 the bottle it should be irresistible for any fancier of traditional burgundy. I have an uneasy feeling that we Shall not see its like again. A whole generation is growing up which has virtual- ly no experience of old-style burgundy, associating the name with the pale, per- fumed substances produced by top vineyards today. This wine will improve for another two or three years, and hold its quality for another ten or twelve. It may be our last chance,with ordinary village wines from the better villages now costing £15- £25 a bottle.
The sample case) works out at £6.78 the bottle, which is not too bad for a case including eight bottles of burgundy, all excellent. Possibly those going for the burgundy will be less than delighted by the Communard claret, and vice versa, but there it is. Someone will be found to drink it all.
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