Wine

The heatwave no sooner ended than it was replaced by the Mandywave. Over the next few days, it may be hard to remember that there are other issues in British politics, including interventions by Tony Blair and Alan Milburn, plus a couple of important by-elections. When Lord Mandelson was forced out, Keir Starmer seemed to relish the defenestration. Mandy has now had an unexpected revenge. His comments on Sir Stumbler’s methods of running a government were meant to be sealed in the archives, and it will be amusing to watch Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting squirm when they are asked whether they agree with his comments on their leader.

You don’t go to a strip club expecting to put something in your mouth unless you’re an incorrigible roué. So it came as something of a surprise to find myself doing just that in the new Spearmint Rhino club. The club recently launched in Soho’s old Windmill Theatre, famous for staying open throughout the Blitz, when girls appeared naked in static tableaux to get around the era’s indecency laws. Now the venue offers both flesh and – more shockingly – food. A restaurant in a strip club has both bacchanalian promise and the risk of comic disaster. Degustation sounds so like a combination of delicious and disgusting, it suggests there is a fine line between food and sex.

We are, according to Marks & Spencer, in ‘picky bits’ season. I cannot bear the tweeness of it all. M&S is surely mere days away from launching a ‘Paddington Bear picky bits picnic range’. In search for an antidote to such horrors, I go on my annual pilgrimage to Bouchon Racine, which starts on Westbourne Park Road at midday, sipping Beamish Irish stout in The Cow. It is reputed to be David Beckham’s favourite London pub and is one of an increasing number of English pubs piggybacking on the phenomenal appetite for Guinness by serving alternatives to the Black Stuff. Beamish and Murphy’s are popping up on taps across the capital and we are the better for it.

As I spent much of January in dry dock in Tommy’s hospital (‘dry’ being doubly appropriate), other avocations were needed. One friend said that it sounded as if I had spent much of the time gazing at the glories of Barry and Pugin, reading poetry or teasing pretty nurses: all pleasant activities. But there was one disappointment. Geoffrey Elton helped to introduce the civilisation of the Rhineland to East Anglia Assuming that hospital wards were good stalking grounds for chaplains, I would have been happy to discuss the Trinity, the meaning of the first verse of St John’s Gospel, or whatever. But only one clergy creature appeared. There is a good old Scots word, ‘mouthless’ (pronounce ‘oo’); that poor fellow fitted the description.

‘Earth has not anything to show more fair.’ I have always believed that the notion of a Dry January must have been launched on the world by von Sacher-Masoch: one of his more obscene fantasies. I would no more subject myself to it than to any of the other 11 months. They all deserve better. This year, however, malign fate intervened. On 3 January I was strolling along (as it happens, stone-cold sober) when I suddenly felt rotten. I sat on a fence to work out what was wrong and promptly passed out, falling a few feet while bumping and bashing on the way. A neighbour spotted the fall and dialled 999 virtually before I landed. A few days later, on the phone, he told me: ‘When I first saw you, mate, I thought you was fucking dead.

There are different ways to approach the tyranny of Dry January. One is to drink in secret. Another is to indulge only on feast days. Personally I have always refused to make January a miserable and puritan month, which means finding excellent red wine to transition from Christmas exuberance to the long, drawn-out evenings of the new year. And so the quest to find the perfect January red begins. It should not be too expensive, but nor should it be a false economy. After the excesses of December, value is key. Readers are forgiven for pursuing a bargain in the January sales – we have all done it. But the truth is many discounted offerings represent exactly the kind of wines one should not be drinking. They are the rejects, the failures, the lesser vintages.

Perhaps because of the Flanders and Swann song in which a louche older gentleman tries to lure a younger lady to bed with Madeira wine, the drink has unfairly acquired a fusty image. While port and sherry have experienced a resurgence, Madeira remains underappreciated despite the fact it stands as a proud monument to the grand old Anglo-Portuguese alliance. One man, Jamie Allsopp, is intent on fighting a noble battle to promote the virtues of Madeira. And so to the Blue Stoops, Allsopp Brewery’s newish pub on Kensington Church Street, for their second annual Game and Madeira Dinner, named after the site in Burton-on-Trent where Jamie’s ancestors first brewed Allsopp’s Ale in 1730.

Towards the end of the war, a young Guards officer met some Italian aristocrats. They had much in common. Robert Cecil was the heir to a marquessate. The Principe di Venosa’s daughter was married to an Italian marchese. Lifelong friendships have ensued down the recent generations. Nevertheless, the English family would be the first to concede that when it comes to generations, the Italians are a couple of centuries ahead. In 1385, Giovanni di Piero joined the Florentine winemakers’ guild. The easy movement between the Florentine bourgeoisie and the aristocracy helps to explain that great city’s long success: the Medici are the obvious example, as are the Antinori, who have been making wine for 26 generations, and are still gaining momentum.

The world is in an even greater mess than was apparent. I am not referring to Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan or other swamps of mayhem and misery, although they are bad enough. No: the new crisis is in France, and it has two malign and reinforcing aspects. First, large numbers of the younger French have given up drinking wine. It is not clear what they are substituting: Coca-Cola, perhaps. If so, God help us (and them). A Frenchman who does not drink wine is a disgrace to his history and heritage. After the liberation in 1944, and in order to punish collaborators, the new French government created a crime: indignité nationale. As it is presumably still on the statute book, it could surely be used to bring condemnation on those who collaborate with teetotalism, or Coke.

Solemn, moving, serious: British. As silence fell and the wreaths were lain, even teenagers joined in the mood of reverence. Suddenly it did not matter what the gossip columns were saying about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, or what latest mischief might arise from the Duchess of Sussex. The great ship of state and of history sailed on serenely. The sacrifices of a previous generation were saluted. They had paid the price for their Britishness. We, their successors, unworthy as we might feel, could at least salute them, especially as good bottles were about to be opened, to toast the fallen. Yet there was a problem far more important than princely indiscretions. We British won the war. Since then, we have defended the peace. Hard fighting is a tough business.

We were drinking Israeli wine as the talk ranged from frivolity to seriousness: from Donald Trump to the tragic paradoxes of the human condition. Some would claim we were discussing the same topic, yet this may not be the time to disrespect the US President. I once described Ariel Sharon as a bulldozer with a Ferrari engine. It was one of the many tragedies to have afflicted Israel/Palestine that just when he had decided to bulldoze for peace, he should have been stricken with a massive stroke. One reason I love being in Israel is that one is never more than 50 yards from an argument Now a new and mighty piece of earth-moving equipment is dominating the landscape.

As readers will be aware, and without sounding too immodest, this column is absolutely committed to diversity. In an earlier era, that might have seemed unnecessary. A British oenophile did not need to search out bottles from great distances. He could merely take his pleasure from the first growths of Bordeaux and the grands crus of Burgundy, with perhaps a little dalliance on the Rhine or the Rhône. Nor was this only a British modus operandi. I covered the French election of 1981 from Burgundy (there were good political reasons for doing so, as well as other ones). The Burgundians knew that wine was made on the banks of the Gironde, but when I assured them the best of it was excellent, there was polite scepticism.

Last weekend, I was in England: among two very diverse aspects of the nation. In recent months, every Saturday, central London has been plagued by demonstrations. I suppose that there must be a right to protest. But what about the right to mosey around Westminster and Whitehall without blocked roads and with any hope of peace and quiet? Last Saturday saw the largest manifestation of all: less of a protest than an English uprising – a flag-waving two-fingered revolt against the liberal intelligentsia. I kept well clear, having no wish to be caught up or kettled, and later there were attacks on the police. This should lead to jail sentences. Two conclusions could be drawn.