My host twinkled sardonically. ‘We’re bound to be discussing Boris. So what’s the right wine?’ I suggested a bunker-busting Australian Shiraz, preceded by an alluring, minxy champagne: cuvée Madame Claude. ‘No, we need something intellectual, to bring perspective.’ ‘That sounds like Graves, perhaps a Pessac-Leognan.’ ‘Got it in one. Came across a couple of bottles the other day. La Mission Haut-Brion ’64 — the year Boris was born.’
In personality, the bottles were everything that a mature claret ought to be, with no resemblance to Boris. Perhaps a little less fruit than there would have been five years ago, but these were well-tempered wines, with subtlety, structure and a length that will last until 31 October. Will Boris?
At present, his animal energy is sweeping all before it. He seems to have found a moulin mystique producing endless supplies of cake, while emancipating himself from gravity, in all senses of the word.
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