THE GOOD aft LIFE
Pamela Vandyke Price
'The season', as far as writers on wine are concerned, has just opened. Invitations to tastings crowd each other and, as one scuttles from a presentation of vintage port to a showing of two dozen obscure and therefore potentially interesting wines, and on to a range of clarets and Burgundies that will keep one's vintage notes up to date, with possibly a 'regional' dinner with wines to match at the end of such a typical day, one pines for some kind of centrally-kept diary, to avoid clashes in times, editorial columns and, inevitably, one's overtaxed taste buds.
And why any kind of a true tasting (as opposed to a party) should take place in the evening, when the palate may be tired and most people really want a drink, I don't know. Nor can I understand why plenty of otherwise nice people, who would be very happy with a bottle of decent plonk quietly in the comfort of their homes, should create oenological havoc at a serious tasting, when the wine trade may be planning their pur- chases and the press attempting to learn something.
It would be soothing to hope that photo- stats of this piece of advice would be mailed with invitations in the future—but maybe nobody would then come to tastings at all. However, the wine trade are too polite to be as outspoken as the press, so I'll see what can be done.
If, ladies and gentlemen, you are invited to a tasting—and a tasting which is not a
party (at which you simply drink), bear in mind that the wines are shown to you so that you may possibly be interested in buying some for future consumption. You may get lunch, you may get refreshments or a glass of something afterwards, but in a tasting
room the occupation of the guests should be taxiing, not exchanging gossip, especially not gossip about how much better X and Co.'s tasting was last week, or commenting adver- . sely on any of the wines in a loud voice.
A great fuss is invariably made about women spoiling tastings because of their wearing scent. I find that very few do. Men, however, smell aggressively and variously of : brilliantine, after-shave, inferior cleaning fluids on their clothes, boot polish and pipes and tobacco in their pockets. Sometimes they smell of all these and, at a recent tasting, one trailed a waft of witch hazel after him quite as distracting as a cloud of Jolie Madame or Joy.
If you station yourself permanently up against the tasting table, chatting merrily the while, you will frustrate and enrage the seri- ous tasters who are trying to get at the wines. Interestingly, it's always the stoutest parties who do this. Sometimes they actually sit on the table too.
If you hog the spittoon—which you are too mock-modest, of course, to use—while you go on chatting, you oblige those working either to swallow quantities of young wine, which they don't want to drink, or walk to a distant spittoon with their mouths bulging so as to get rid of it. Unless, of course, you are blocking me. I simply spit and apologise afterwards if there's any ricochet onto your hands, your clothes or your shoes. Do your spitting and walk away and don't lean on the spittoon either; it isn't a bird bath.
If you want to swig gobletsful of the most expensive wine of all, then it's only fair to ask one of your hosts if you may take more than the two-sip tasting sample usually poured or which you should pour if there are no waiters. A notorictusly greedy tasting. frequenter once asked a firm marketing impeccable fine German wines why they weren't showing any beeren- or trockenbeer- enauslen at their tasting? 'Because the wrong people—those who don't buy—drink too much of it,' was the crisp reply.
Should you be intimidated by the number of wines, it's fair to ask one of the hosts to 'mark your card' and select a representative bunch for you to try. But don't surge heartily at an organiser shouting 'Which wine is nice?' if he's just concluding a tricky con- versation with somebody buying in hundred dozens, or soothing a foreign proprietor who can't understand why it wasn't possible to get the Snowdons to attend. If you are tempted to leave with one of the better bottles in your pocket—yes, this is done—then don't be surprised when there isn't an invitation for you next year. Should you find out the date of the tasting and come all the same—this is done too—or ring up and express amazement you haven't been sent a card, or complain because you are not at the top table at any luncheon or dinner offered afterwards—this is done more often than one would suppose—then you may be sure that, even if your hosts don't commit the sacrilege of spiking your Lafite with something sinister, they will not forget. After all, the wine trade think in decades, not mere months and years. Someday you'll want a rushed order, an early chance to buy in a remnant sale, or a very special bottle to create or save an important occasion. They'll remember. They may also simply tell me— we're all great gossips across the decanters —and point you out to me at the next tast- ing. And it's astonishing how many scores can be instantaneously settled around the spittoon. -
But for those not fortunate enough to sample in person the range of wines offered by 0. W. Loeb (15 Jermyn Street, London, SW!), I would like to commend this firm's Anjou Rouge. A red Loire isn't all that com- mon anyway, and many of those that we do see—including those in the region itself—are shrill, unsatisfactory little wines. This, from the Cabernet grape, one of the great claret cepages, is very dry, light but with sufficient body to make it excellent all-purpose every- day drinking and, in my view, a bargain at 16s 9d. It is London bottled and as I think it would be greatly improved in appeal by a little bottle age, you might put a few - bottles away for drinking in the New Year If you're a lover of Vouvray, which one sel- dom sees, or at least not to its advantage in the uic, then the 1966 Vouvray Cos Naudin, Sec. estate bottled A. Foreau, is a beautiful still white wine, with a flowery nose and a honey after-taste—but much more of a din- ner party drink than the hair lotion. I would recommend it with a fairly fat, plainly cooked fish, such as turbot, or certain rather simple chicken dishes. It costs 27s.
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