L’Epicurienne

This competition has now closed. Read Jonathan Ray’s post-competition blog here.

I’m hoping you might forgive a little self indulgence with our latest competition.  My dear old dad Cyril Ray – formerly assistant editor of this very magazine (in the days of Inglis, Levin and Whitehorn) and twenty times the writer about drink (or indeed anything else) that I could ever hope to be – died 25 years ago this month.

He wrote and edited countless books about wine, food and social history including Merry England, Bollinger, Lafite, Cognac, In a Glass Lightly and the long-running series The Compleat Imbiber. The tome dearest to his heart, however, was a slim volume of saucy verse he produced in cahoots with his equally dirty-minded artist friend Charles Mozley, entitled Lickerish Limericks with Filthy Pictures.

My favourite of these, entitled Dolce Far Niente, runs thus:

I was sitting there, taking my ease,

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And enjoying my Beaumes-de-Venise,

With a charming young poppet,

But she told me to stop it,

As my fingers crept up past her knees…

Although I have to say that Bordelay runs it close:

The girls of Bordeaux, I’m afraid,

You would hardly consider as staid:

A young Bordelaise

Knows dozens of ways

In which she can get bordelaide…

There are many other such treats, including one entitled L’Epicurienne about an imperious floosie called Susie.