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Seventy-two-i years on

The first taste of wine is something not to be forgotten. Mine was on Christ- mas Day, 1912, when I was a little over ten years old. At the head of the festive table was my maternal grandfather. At the end of the meal, after the port had gone round once, he looked down the table and called to my governess, 'What's that boy drink- ing?"Lemonade,' replied Stevie. There was a snort of indignation from Grandpa.

• Do you want to kill the bloody boy? Give him some port.'

I drank, with remembered pleasure, a glass of what was probably Cockburn's '90. Later I told Stevie that it was much nicer than Californian Syrup of Figs, A strict abstainer, she gave me that night a larger than usual dose of her favourite purger, Gregory Powder. Except at Holy Com- munion I did not taste wine for another ten years, being content with home-brewed ale and farmhouse cider, some of which had a kick like a mule.

The world of wine was very different when I was young. Then there were two categories of wine drinkers, in Britain, at the extreme ends of the social scale: the well-to-do, and the very poor. The poor bought flagons of cheap red wine to mix with methylated spirit, then white, to produce Red Biddy, as a temporary release from theeir often miserable lives.

Recently I was shown the cellar book, dated 1920, from a country house in Kent, of which nothing remains today except the converted stable block. Then the cellar contained claret, burgundy, hock, cham- pagne, sherry, madeira and port. There was also cognac and two bottles of benedic- tine. But no table wines from Spain, Portugal, Italy, or anywhere else.

A few weeks ago I received the new wine list of a private — as distinct from multiple — wine merchant with whom I do busi- ness. It lists wines from France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Australia, South Africa, Italy, California, Bulgaria, Chile and Eng- land. On the list of a well-known wine chain from whom I make occasional purch- ases there are over 200 wines from 22 countries. They include Algeria, Austria, Bulgaria, Chile, Cyprus, China, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Lebanon, New Zealand, Australia, Portugal, Romania, South Afri- ca, the US and Yugoslavia. There is also on the list a varietal with the somewhat ambiguous name of Riesling Italianski.

In my young days there was no such thing as a wine store, multiple or other- wise, though shops like the Army and Navy, Jacksons of Piccadilly and Harrods had wine departments. There were some licensed grocers, and, mainly in the Mid- lands and Wales, licensed chemists. They served the needs of those who could not afford or did not wish to buy by the dozen. Serious wine drinkers regarded their wine merchants as personal friends. For the sons of 'the gentry' the wine trade was an alternative profession to the army, navy, law and the Church. To leave one's wine merchant's was a social upheaval akin to divorce. My father got his whisky direct from Scotland. It arrived in stout wooden returnable cases each holding a dozen bottles. Such was the standard of honesty in those days that the only sealing on the hinged cases was stout twine with a dab of sealing wax on the knots.

My father's wine merchant was J. H. G. Hamilton, in the main street of Canterbury opposite the Rose Hotel. Both were des- troyed in the blitz but the spacious cellars under the street remain, now used by a bank for document storage. The wine merchant was Mr Frend, of an old Canter- bury family. Sometimes I accompanied my father to his parlour where business was done over a glass of old madeira and a digestive biscuit.

My father did not keep a great quantity of wine in the large cellars under his house but he was fond of port and made a practice of laying down eight dozen bottles each year and naming the bin after the current Derby winner. This praiseworthy practice came to a sudden, and from my point of view disastrous, end when he was about 60. For the first time in his life he had a severe and very painful attack of gout. His doctor, who was something of a spoil-sport where drink was concerned, told him that he must give up drinking port or risk the consequences. My father sent for Mr Frend and told him to sell all the port and red wine in the cellar.

When he died, at the age of 83, the district valuer arrived to make the valua- tion for probate. 'I expect I shall find something interesting down there,' he said asking for the cellar keys, almost licking his lips with the thought of the hidden riches for the taxman. He emerged about five minutes later. He had found one bottle of Cyprus sherry, one bottle of hock, and two flagons of milk stout my aged stepmother took for her health.

One does not have to have been a wine drinker for all that long to remember the days when in most public house bars a request for a glass of wine was met with a flat refusal. It was the brewers' policy not to sell wine in pub bars in competition with their own products. Today the big brewing concerns, nationally and internationally, have millions invested in the wine trade.

For those who liked a glass of wine during the working day there were the wine bars, admirable institutions founded in the last century. Yates and Shorts are names that come to mind. Among those of which I have affectionate memories, and of the dear friends one met in them, were one under the Ludgate Hill railway station, another in the Strand close to Somerset House, a Shorts house in the Edgware Road, and one a little way Below Bar in Southampton. They served mainly sherry and port from the wood, in what were known as dock glasses, about twice the size of today's conventional port glass. A glass of port cost ten old pence, with a currant bun or biscuit. Port was drunk in other ways. I recall, at a sergeants' mess dance, offering the RSM's wife a whisky. 'No thank you,' she replied, 'I'm TT: When I asked her what she would like she said, 'A port and lemon, thank you.'

There is a pleasant story about the wine expert who appeared on television blind- folded and tasting various wines. This he did with remarkable accuracy. To round off the programme the producer gave him a glass of tap water. The expert went through the usual ritual, smelling, twisting the liquid in the glass and spitting. Then came his comment. 'I don't know what this stuff is. I have never tasted it before in my life. But I can tell you one thing about it. It won't sell.'

It is some years since I discovered that it is unwise to give even a gentle pull to the leg of some wine writers. I had three of them to lunch at my home in Kent. I thought it might be amusing to give them as an aperitif something that I was pretty certain none of them had drunk before, and to ask them to guess what it was. It was a slightly chilled white wine. They went through the usual tasting drill and started to argue as to what it was. 'I think it is one of those lesser Valais wines the Swiss don't export."No, I don't agree. It is Austrian, probably from the Tyrol.' And so on.

Finally they turned to me and said, rather sharply, 'Well, what is it?' It is a white wine,' I replied, 'made at Merry- down in Sussex from white currants.' One of the three roared with laughter, the other two lapsed into sullen silence. I am certain that they did not enjoy the meal or the rather special Corton and Gewurztraminer I gave them with it. When the meal was finished they left for London with almost indecent haste, having talked during it as if I was not there. Two of them have never spoken to me again.

John Baker White