President Markle | The Spectator

Silky, sumptuous wines for Christmas dinner

I have had occasion to mention George Saintsbury’s classic, if quirky, Notes on a Wine-Cellar (1920) in this column before. Back then, it was to sample and swish about the mouth Saintsbury’s fondness — which I took to be a broader public fondness — for fortified wines like port, sherry, and Madeira. I suspect that most of my readers, except when listening to Flanders and Swann, rarely give Madeira a second thought. And although afternoons were made for sherry, they were made for other things too. As for vintage port, we are wheeling into the season — Thanksgiving through New Year’s — when it comes into its own and gladdens the hearts of many. I am certainly counting on it to gladden the hearts of the serious thinkers chez Kimball at Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.

Calla Jones Corner

I ate Audrey Hepburn’s kidneys

It was late November when Diana called, telling me her butcher would soon kill the “fatted calf.” Sharing a butchered calf once a year with a Swiss friend meant you both had a freezer-full of veal at half price. Being asked to share a calf was also a sign of a deep friendship — akin to using tu instead of vous and locking arms in a toast over shot glasses of white wine. Both could take ten years, which was about as long as I’d known Diana. I had long since gotten over what butchers did. I liked meat — most meat. But I didn’t want to see lots of blood. Growing up, I always asked my father for the outside slice of a roast or his charcoal-grilled steak. Now, I drew the line with rabbit. Rabbit is not normally on an American menu.

Hannah Moore

What’s good from the goose

One of the more curious habits of the British is their tendency to publish opinion polls in national newspapers about their own food habits. Which way round, for example, are you meant to dress your scone? Is it clotted cream first, then jam — or jam first and cream second? Well, the Queen does it jam first, so that must be the way. Or that other national debate, tea and then milk, or the opposite? When I first arrived in the UK thirteen years ago, I was amused to see how worked up the British get about such questions. Try asking them sometime and see what happens. A new poll reveals that 58 percent of the British public admit to preferring roast potatoes over turkey. “How could you?” we’re supposed to gasp. “Everyone knows Christmas dinner is about the turkey!

Jane Stannus

The finest festive fizz

A dinner party without good conversation is like flat Champagne: pretty pointless. It’s like that not-so-funny joke about the inscription on an atheist’s tombstone: “All dressed up and nowhere to go.” Of course at a miserable dinner party you and your glad-rags have reached a destination of sorts, but (as for the late atheists) it’s not the one you were expecting. How to avoid such an infernal disappointment? Jean-Paul Sartre famously felt that hell was other people; all I can say is, that’s no attitude to bring to the table.

Food & Drink