ANOTHER VOICE
The greatest danger threatening mankind: the extinction of port
AUBERON WAUGH
upon us, we must gloomily prepare to be told that the Christ- mas message of this year, if not of all time, is chiefly concerned with the conservation of the environment: Jesus was born in Bethlehem in order to warn us about threats to the ozone layer through exces- sive use of under-arm deodorants, and to rally support for the blue whale against the greedy Japanese, who will eat anything that swims. My own feeling is that the conservation or 'green' movement has become the pathetic relic of man's inherent desire to do good, just as the coccyx is all that is left of the human tail. On Monday of this week the Daily Mirror became wildly excited about an English baby boy who had been born with a two-inch furry tail which he could wag. Lacking the Sun's pioneering spirit, the Mirror did not treat us to a photograph of the child, but made it the main news of the day, nevertheless.
I think I understand the Mirror's excite- ment. If Englishmen can still be born with tails, there may be hope for any degree of constructive retrenchment: architects might design proper buildings again, poets write proper poetry, the working class might vote Labour. But I am not sure that much hope resides in the 'green' move- ment. Advent and Christmas are the time when good men (and women, up to a point) meditate about the poor, the sick, the old and the mad. Traditionally, we might even have resolved to make some sort of provision for these unfortunate people, but since the Government has grabbed all charitable activity of this sort for itself, we are left only with the whales and holes in the ozone layer to worry about, or searching for some unimportant subspecies of bird or insect which we can declare threatened.
It was astute of the politicians, of course, to grab the charitable activities formerly undertaken by individuals and religious groups in order to feed their own self- importance and power-urges. It makes them able to represent resistance to their encroachment as somehow immoral, in- spired by hatred of the poor, the sick, the old and the mad. Never mind that their work in this field is characterised by swinish incompetence, whereby the greatest sums of money are spent and the maximum number of people employed to least effect. The real damage they do by taking over all charitable activities is in the impoverishment of the human spirit which results. Mercy, as we all know, blesses him that gives as well as him that receives. If the charitable urge is directed into political activity, that is a shame. If it is directed into sentimental concern for diseased seal pups, that is a monstrous perversion.
But so long as a residual Christianity survives, I suppose we must play along with its preoccupations. In the Douro valley, where every prospect pleases and not even man is particularly vile, one can easily become worried about the encroach- ment of history. At the beginning of the year, as a few readers may remember, I made it my New Year's resolution to drink more port, especially vintage port. This has been more difficult than people might suppose, since in this health- and woman- dominated age fewer and fewer English- men are prepared to drink it with me. I can say only that I have done my best. Now, with Christmas approaching, one turns to the conservation aspect of my pathetic attempt to do good.
I do not expect Christopher Booker to agree with me, nor even Polly Toynbee, when I single out the survival of the port industry as one of the key issues of our time, and the threat to it from higher wages resulting from Portugal's accession to the Common Market as one of the greatest dangers facing mankind at this moment in 'I'm Erik the Green.' time, in this day and age etc. Let them worry about lesser spotted grebes and marsh warblers. I could live a fulfilled life if I never spotted another grebe or heard another marsh warble. But the thought that my children's children might never take a glass of vintage port from Warre or Taylor or Dow or Graham, Fonseca or Noval, Cockburn or even Sandeman, fills me with sadness and taediurn vitae.
Premium port production might seem a hopeless task in the modern world. Grown on the scorching, terraced slopes of the Douro, the grape requires a degree of labour intensity which is unthinkable in anything nowadays except the production of some vaccine against a new disease. My own solution is that the growers should forget all about the middle ranges of port — the vintage character, the crusted and late-bottled vintage — and concentrate on the top and bottom ends of the market: the declared vintages and the cheapest ruby and tawny.
Australia has shown us that really good tawny can be made from the shiraz grape grown in flat vineyards which are machine- pruned and machine-harvested. There may not be many flat areas in the thousand square miles of the port appellation, but there are certainly some. France is already the world's biggest importer of port — almost exclusively in the tawny style — and there is every reason to suppose that Belgium, Holland and Germany will learn the habit after 1992 (unless Mrs Thatcher succeeds in destroying the Common Mar- ket first). That should provide the port industry with its bread and butter.
The taste for vintage port is almost entirely exclusive to the Brits. I am afraid we will have to educate our European cousins in the taste if the product is to survive. It will have to move up-market and cost L40-£50 a bottle if it is to survive at all. This has already happened to the premier cni bordeaux and grand cru bur- gundies, where international competition for the limited supply has forced prices to previously unimaginable levels. The same must happen to vintage port. My good work for next year will be to invite as many European guests as I can to stay in Somer- set, and fill them up to the gills with vintage port. It may be a small enough contribution, but I bet it is as much as Polly Toynbee makes to the survival of the blue whale.
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