Wine

The Indian summer was still fending off the mists and mellow fruitfulness. But the autumn term was about to begin; the season’s changes would soon be manifest. So it was a day for anecdote and recapitulation; for telling amusing August tales, behind which lurked deeper meanings. A couple of friends had been to the Palio, as everyone should, once. I remember being surprised that several hours of mediaeval pageantry could hold one’s attention, which it certainly did: but more than once? No one would watch Psycho twice. I also remember being surprised that the young of Siena would spend weeks rehearsing: hard to imagine that happening here. The spectacle ends

I’m currently at a French campsite in the Languedoc, having been persuaded by my wife that it would be a good place to spend our summer holiday. She described the campsite as ‘a French Butlins’, which she knew would appeal to me. If I can’t afford to stay at the Hotel du Cap, which I can’t, I’d prefer to be at the bottom of the social pyramid rather than somewhere in the middle. But her main argument was that it would be incredibly cheap —cheaper, even, than renting a house in Cornwall. We’re paying about £100 a day for a ‘chalet’ that sleeps six. There was simply no way we

‘When he’s away, the thing he misses about Porto is the tripe.’ I was talking to Eduarda Sandeman, wife of George Sandeman, chairman of the eponymous port firm. Despite his illustrious name, George Sandeman isn’t from Oporto (as the British call it). His family are from Jerez and he was educated in England. He speaks English and Spanish fluently but he told me that he is still teased by his wife for his imperfect Portuguese. It’s a hard language to pronounce — a bit like Spanish spoken by a Russian. George’s love of tripe, though, marks him out as a true son of Oporto. The inhabitants of the city are

The Honourable Society of Odd Bottles began proceedings with a report on the activities of our junior branch. These youngsters are not yet eligible to become drinking members, but they are chosen because of their unremitting hostility to vermin and their burgeoning enthusiasm for killing game. Young Charlie, the Nimrod of his generation, has been prodigiously active. It is surprising that there is a single grey squirrel still alive in Somerset. Any rat that comes his way goes no further. He is also mightily effective against rabbits and pigeons, which he enjoys scoffing, after he has skinned or plucked them. Charlie has inherited a .410: the fifth generation of his

‘There lies the dearest freshness deep down things’ — and also the dearest Frenchness. It is easy to be rude about the French governing elite; indeed, it is impossible to be polite about them. But there is a France profonde, with a deep-rooted identity, like gnarled, ancient vines. There are said to be nearly 400 French cheeses; la France profonde has at least as many capitals, where things are done in the old way, with a combination of commercial realism, ancestral piety and devotion to the terroir. You will find all that in Gevrey-Chambertin, a modest, confident and enchanting little town, in which history is now, and Burgundy. This is

There are those who claim that this column is idiosyncratic. They have seen nothing yet. I am about to mention a subject which has never previously appeared in any drink column, ever. Tapioca. That must be the acme of idiosyncrasy. I was staying with my friends Eyzie and Ro in Somerset. Especially if you have no weight issues, they are the perfect hosts, for they both love cooking. My duties are limited to bottle–opening, saucisson-slicing and, of course, supervision. They also have an abundant kitchen garden, a deep freeze full of the trophies of the game season and excellent local suppliers for all the victuals they themselves cannot provide. A

The supermarket chains are not always blameworthy. Their missionary efforts have helped to ensure that wine drinking in Britain is much less bedevilled by social anxiety than it used to be. There was a time when Mateus rosé, God help us, exploited that in its TV ads. The boss invited home for dinner: how could the husband navigate the social minefield of serving wine? Answer, Mateus rosé. How sad. If I am ever asked about wine by someone who professes to know nothing, I always make three points. First, trust your taste buds and your nose. If the wine smells like a car engine, there is something wrong — and

For many years, the Central American republic of Guatemala had a grievance against the United Kingdom. It claimed sovereignty over British Honduras, then a colony of ours. Eventually, all that died down. Calling itself Belize, British Honduras became independent and showed no desire to join Guatemala. Opposing colonialism could earn a plaudit from the sillier sort of states at the UN. It was harder to gainsay democracy. Back in the old days, there was an amusing exchange. In pursuit of his country’s ambitions, the then Guatemalan ambassador pressed for a meeting with the then Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin. Bevin is said to have left school at eight. His spoken English

Towards the chimes at midnight, a few of us left a — respectable — establishment near Leicester Square. Eight or nine youngsters were brawling vigorously, boots and fists. 999 was dialled, and the response was admirably fast. The cops would no doubt have recorded it as just another trivial incident in the life of a British inner city. But how squalid. That day, there was a story about undergraduettes moonlighting as lap-dancers or strippers, or worse. We have suffered a loss of civilisation since Newman: most of the ‘universities’ to which those girls were accredited should never have received that status. Until the day before yesterday, they would have been

Meeting to taste wine, we started by talking about dogs. Roy Hattersley is good on the subject, which ought to be impossible. For he is opposed to shooting, and the partnership between gun and gun-dog, the dog’s tail-wagging joy as it luxuriates in its master’s approval, is one of the highest expressions of man’s commonwealth with the animal kingdom. Well, tot sententiae. But Roy understands one point. Human life is enfiladed by tragedy and the brief span of animal life is one aspect of that. In our relationship with animals, love and loss are intertwined. There was a splendid labrador called Hector, bred in Lincolnshire by Sir Brian Wyldbore-Smith. A

When we consider poets who perished before their day, thoughts turn to the Romantics or the war victims: Burns, Keats, Shelley: Owen, Keith Douglas. (Had both lived, Douglas would have ended up a greater poet than Owen: discuss.) But 16th-century poets had an even higher casualty rate: Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, Southwell, Marlowe, Mark Alexander Boyd. Amidst a few immortal lines, we strain in sadness to think what might have been. In two respects, Sidney can be bracketed with Yeats. First, he really was a soldier, scholar, horseman. Second, he too coined an immortal political aperçu. Yeats was the supremely perceptive political poet — ‘Great hatred: little room’; ‘The best lack

This month’s wine club lecture was on red burgundy. The members were settling themselves at two large tables when I arrived, about ten to each one. I took an empty seat at the table farthest from the door and looked diffidently around, hoping to meet a welcoming eye. Not one. Presumably members were tired of sharing the mysteries of their deity with people who came only once, and they had evolved a wait-and-see policy. Everyone had brought their own wine glass. There were glasses of every size and shape. Most had a notebook and biro also at the ready. The woman sitting directly opposite me now spoke to me accusingly.

It is an old adage, but still pertinent. ‘Every generalisation about India is true, and so is the opposite.’ The other night, some of us were discussing the US and wondering if the same applied. Certainly, there are lots of paradoxes. Although Americans passionately believe that they live in the land of the free, there is plenty of enthusiasm for chains. A few years ago, the state of Vermont simultaneously legalised homosexual marriage and prohibited the serving of fried eggs unless they were ‘over easy’ — i.e. bent over. There is a terrible amount of food faddism. Outside the big cities, it is hard to find cheese made with raw

The Christmas/New Year period is always fun for health balls. Because we like drinking lots of wine and eating lots of chocolate around this time of year, newspapers like to pick up on weird little studies which purport to show that those things are good for us, while leaving out inconvenient details, stuff like ‘the study was on some tissue samples in a petri dish’ or ‘the study was on a chemical which exists in wine in trace amounts but we’re pretending it’s about wine in general’ or ‘obviously chocolate isn’t good for you, for God’s sake’. So here are some hints and tips to avoid being taken for a

A few days ago I went truffle hunting in Piedmont. It’s been a bumper year for white truffles in northern Italy — the best ever, according to some experts — thanks to climate change and an exceptionally wet summer. My guide was a brilliantly sharp-eyed Italian, Mario, whose dog Rex did the snuffling. Mario told me that dogs are better trufflers than pigs because pigs often eat the truffles before you can get your hands on them. We (or rather Rex) found two, and I have been devouring truffle since I returned; I’ve had it with scrambled eggs, mashed potato, pasta and even just straight onto toast. I didn’t think