Wine

‘The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers / Pass me the bottle, old lad, there’s an end of summer.’ The paraphrase was justified, for the weather was doing its best to reinforce Housmanic gloom — although the scene through the windowpanes was best described in Scottish, not Shropshire. There is a Scots word, dreich. It may not be quite onomatopoeic, but roll it round your mouth and you will get the message. We certainly did. Before us was a sodden lawn festooned with dead leaves. A few weeks ago, they would have been resplendent in dancing verdancy. More recently, it would have been a stately golden brown, the colour

Peace came dropping slow. I have never regarded west Flanders as part of la France profonde, but here we were, only a few miles from Lille, in the depths of tranquillity. Earlier in the summer, there had been an excitement. An enormous wild boar had erupted into the garden. Our host shot him, and excited littlies promptly renamed their grand-père: Obelix. I had entertained Yves at a club table. His reciprocity was embarrassingly more generous than his excuse for it. Inevitably, the conversation meandered into politics. The house had a complex history. Vauban is said to have billeted himself there before fortifying Lille. It suffered some damage in both world

Are there still travelling fairs? In many villages, they used to be part of the annual round. For weeks, the children’s anticipation would mount. Then the great day would come. Clowns, dodgems, candy floss: in those day no one knew about sugar-rushes so the brats grew delirious with excitement while the parents enjoyed themselves more than they let on. Does all that still happen – or do you have to go to Boris Johnson’s office for a similar spectacle? On a smaller scale, I entertain my friends about once a year with a fantasy which does not require so many props. It is called the Anderson diet fair. I announce

The wines of Tokaji run like a golden thread through Hungarian history. There are references to their nectar-like quality in the Hungarian national anthem. Imperial Tokaji, the world’s sweetest wine, has always been prized. As its name implies, much of it found its way to the Habsburgs’ cellars. Emperors often used it as birthday or Christmas presents for fellow monarchs. So I was delighted to taste some non-imperial bottles over dinner at the Hungarian embassy, courtesy of that impressive fellow Kristóf Szalay–Bobrovniczky, the ambassador, a good friend of President Orbán’s. Mr Orbán is much demonised. Along with President Trump and Brexit, he is seen to be a threat to the

It was a culinary triumph. My hosts do not spend much time in the UK, and are determined to entertain stylishly during their visits. This Christmas they succeeded, blending tradition and radicalism. The planning began in Pall Mall on the third lunching-day in advent. We addressed the major strategic question: satiation. After bird plus pud, there is barely the energy to fall asleep in front of an old film and the rest of the day can be unsatisfactory. In recent years, I have noticed a tendency to deal with this problem by de-fanging the pudding. There is a new girlie-man breed of Christmas puds which lack the embrandied pomp of

In longevity, great wine can march with human life. Creating (better still, maintaining) a fine cellar really is a compact between the dead, the living and those not yet able to appreciate serious claret. There is a sort of comparison with trees and houses, yet in those cases, the time-scales transcend the shortness of our lifespan. I have a number of friends who plant trees in the serene and stoical knowledge that, one day, the offspring of their husbandry will spread a benison over the surrounding countryside, though they themselves will not be here to see it. Nunc dimittis. Houses are even more germane. One of the glories of England

I was reminded of Wild West films from boyhood. Then, the beleaguered garrison scanned the horizon; would the US cavalry arrive in time to save them from being scalped? (John Wayne always did.) Now, one was hoping for relief, not from the Injuns, but in the form of an Indian summer. This is of especial interest to those who have a tendresse for Somerset cricket. Its paladins usually have a charmingly amateur quality. As Cardus wrote of an earlier cricketing vintage: ‘[They are] children of the sun and wind and grass. Nature fashioned them rather than artifice.’ Somerset needs a match or two in order to gain points and avoid

Mark Harvey, Chapel Down’s managing director of wines, was in great form last week at our Spectator Winemaker’s Lunch, held as usual in our boardroom. And I must add that Mark’s wines were in equally tiptop shape. With vineyards across Kent and a winery near Tenterden, Chapel Down is well-known as the largest producer of fine English wine. Although most of us around the table had enjoyed Chapel Down’s wares before, the one or two guests who hadn’t were taken aback by the wines’ quality, style and, well, sheer panache. We started with the 2011 Three Graces, a fabulous fizz blended from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier (the said

I have been thinking about the Dark Ages. This has nothing to do with Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn. A friend of mine, Chase Coffin-Roggeveen, has a doctoral thesis in mind about the increasing use of wine for liturgical purposes during the English Dark Ages. Like all scholars who address that period, he has to wrestle with slender sources. Those who do not leave documents tend to be written out of history: think of the Wends. There are revisionists, such as Sally Harvey, who contrast the surviving beauties of Saxon civilisation — consider the manuscripts — with the Normans’ brutality. There is an obvious three-hour essay question: ‘How dark were

It was a typical bank holiday. Usual English weather: glorious, until you leave home without a brolly. Then fickleness supervenes — just like the opinion polls. I was pressed by anxious enquiries. ‘You’re supposed to know about these things. There’s no chance of Corbyn winning, surely?’ On the assumption that enough of the sovereign people are still in their right wits, I was able to sound reassuring. But as I did so, a memory came back: Quintin Hogg in 1964, proclaiming that anyone who voted Labour was stark, staring bonkers. These days, that would be called a gaffe. The once and future Lord Hailsham was famous for gaffes. As he