Ever so tasteful
Pamela Vandyke Price
One should be a fraction prudent before lashing around with the nasty cracks (a verb that the sap among those likely to assault our comfort at any inst would do well to vide). So all those who knew but didn't bother to write and tell me that it was Bernard of Morlaix, and not the Saint who wrote flora nouissima can revel in my putting on a white sheet, because, as a scholarly friend mildly remarked, I might have known that the saintly theologian was not a poet (else he might have been nicer to Abelard).
Therefore I shall be wholly cautious in my comments about a well-produced book yclept Wine Man's Bluff (and will name neither author nor publisher). This tome purports to give instruction in the concocting of alcoholic beverages, with which I am in sympathy, but voices opinions, nay, promulgates statements of an audacity that puts me in the shrinking violet category. The author has some curious antipathy to anything of an alcoholic beverage nature made from the fruits and vegetables of the countryside; true, they do not qualify as "wine" according to the strict definition of the word as I understand it, because this is "made from the juice of freshly gathered grapes, the fermentation of which has been carried through in the district of its origin and according to local tradition and practice." But why the author's sneer that "homemade wine arouses instant suspicion among the more sophisticated drinks"? As one who has partaken of many a beaker of parsnip, cowslip, elderberry, apple and found them good, (after all, I did much of my early drinking on perry) — I don't see why these traditional and straightforward drinks are so inferior to the vaunted resuscitations of imported musts plus additives that, one is told, result in draughts "virtually indistinguishable" from such wines as Burgundy, Beaujolais, Chianti,-4 Hock, Moselle, Champagne . .'• Sherry, port, vermouth, Madeira . . . sloe gin, creme de menthe and Benedictine."
The recipes for some of these
potions are almost inclusive of eye of bat and toe of frog, that for "Moselle" containing lychees, elderflowers, honey, lemon Or gooseberries, apple juice and rose petals while poor old "claret" gets boiled up with damsons or sloes, bananas, red rose petals, yeast nutrient, pectozyme and "claret grape concentrate." But compounders of such, you'll be relieved to hear, can be secure knowing that their 'wines will be innocent of hangover-producing additives.' (I mast remember to get myself invited to chez Lafite, Bollinger, Brolio or J. J. PrUm of Wehlen when those additives are popped
in vat, cask or bottle.) Now if anyone wants to do their
own thing, I'm delighted. Butif someone asserts that an advertising jingle is music as great as (and "virtually indistinguishable from ) Beethoven's Triple Concerto, that a magazine cover is art equivalent to a Rembrandt, what they ran up with a self-devised paper pattern the same as a Balmain or Balenciaga model — or a mess of beverage is as good as a great wine, then I venture to suggest that it's they who are out of step. If you get as much pleasure from ducks on the wall as from Michelangelo, this doesn't really entitle you to consider that yol•!1" plasticine version of a gnome is equal to an Epstein.
And for those who want just to
learn about wine, I have pleasure in announcing that J. M. Broad bent's book, Wine Tasting is now available in revised and updated form, from Christie's Wine Department, post free for £1.35. Michael Broadbent, a Master of Wine, is head of that department, and one of the most respected of contemporary tasters. I do not agree with everything he says-7 and he would think me an idiot if I did — but his approach to tasting is of great interest. Perhaps there is a fraction too much 'in-talk, using the language of the wine trade, rather than terms that We outsiders can easily understand, and author's stress on sometimes, going entirely by the sense.or smell — which some sincere vine lovers do not possess as he does, and therefore need it to be aug mented he seems ssentso is e of tasteTor mented he seems ssentso is e of tasteTor h ies something which I hope readers may be encouraged to debate over. wthienedewcraintitnegrs.. But this is civilise°
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