Wine

Q. I was invited to birthday drinks in London. On my way there the name of someone I haven’t heard from for months flashed up on my mobile. My instinct was not to answer — I’d heard the host of the party had gone off this woman and thought it best not to answer in case the woman asked what I was doing that night. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings if she’d been excluded. Nor did I want to lie. However, on arrival at the party my host told me that all was now well between him and her and she’d been invited but couldn’t come. When I rang her the next day, she said she’d been calling to say she was sorry she wouldn’t be seeing me that night. Mary, how could I have handled this better? — Name and address withheld A.

During the Middle Ages, some of the monastic halls which evolved into Oxbridge colleges allowed their younger inmates to indulge in jocundus honestus after the evening meal. There is nothing monastic about the clubs around St James’s, least of all at their dining tables. But there is still plenty of jocund. Honestus? That is another matter. The other evening, in a gathering well-equipped with bottles and glasses, someone remarked that we were still in the last lap of Lent and then asked an improbable and unexpected question: ‘So what have you given up, Anderson?’ I was pleased with my reply: ‘Hope.

Three tribal Tories had gathered for a convivial glass, and also a consolatory one. One quoted Huskisson’s verdict after Goderich’s brief and worthless premiership. ‘Never surely was there a man at the head of affairs so weak, undecided and utterly helpless.’ Well, the female sex has now caught up. I said that at least she had refuted Hopkins. ‘No worst, there is none.’ As long as Theresa May is in charge, there could always be a worst. The terrible premier has out-gloomed the Terrible Sonnets. We were hiding away in a club, hoping not to meet any foreigners. Not that any of us is in the least xenophobic. One chap has a house in France; another regularly takes a place in Italy. Our affection for abroad goes well beyond its food and its bottles.

Acouple of lawyers were disagreeing about a matter which could become increasingly relevant. Could a sitting president pardon himself? But there was a further aspect to this question. A friend of mine who has known Mr Trump for 20 years and who likes him detects a weakening in his mental powers. One of our number was a distinguished neurologist. Pressed to overcome his intellectual scrupulousness about television diagnosis, he thought it not impossible. So are we dealing with dementia, or is the President of the United States just demented? Might it be early stage Alzheimer’s, or merely chronic Trump-heimer’s?

It appeared to be an uneven contest. A few friends were meeting for a festive wine-tasting, to compare and contrast some interesting bottles. The clarets opened with an Angelus ’98, a superb wine from an outstanding year. In response, the Palmer ’04 seemed to be outgunned. But, gaining strength from a bit more time in the decanter, it became increasingly formidable. Words and wine: there is an unceasing struggle to translate wine into language without falling into euphuism or pseudery. This time, I felt drawn to a naval image. In its growing power, the Palmer reminded me of that early scene from Sink the Bismarck!

It is enough to drive a fellow to the bottle. I am not given to agnosticism. My view is that if the evidence seems to sustain a conclusion, weigh it and arrive at one. On Brexit, I find that impossible. Most of my friends have no problem. From Remoaners to rejoicers, they all deal in certainties. I cannot emulate them. My intellect seems to have turned into a cushion, bearing the imprint of the last person I spoke to. I refuse to believe that the Bank of England has turned into the equivalent of an M.R. James ghost story, a delightful way of giving everyone a good scare on a wintry evening. But friends of mine argue equally forcefully to the contrary. Roger Bootle, David Howell, Nigel Lawson, Peter Lilley, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Matt Ridley: these are serious men, making a cogent case.

I was trying to remember what I once knew about the theology of the Reformation and especially the various factions’ arguments about good works. Some of them thought that good works were a testimony to Grace. To others, they were a route to Grace. To the Calvinists, they were a mere irrelevance. All that mattered was the inexorable, terrifying verdict of predestination. That at least is my recollection. Choosing a via media, if not necessarily Anglicana, I prefer a phrase from the 1990s, ‘the active citizen’. Whatever its relationship to Divine Grace, that sounds a useful goal, and I occasionally try to pursue it, especially in relation to a club of which I am a member. We spend a lot of time worrying about the problems of ageing.

Darkness, but not the blanket of the dark. This was a sinister darkness, beset by smoke and flames, by the clash of steel, by screams, by terror, by horror. The victims were Huguenots on the quayside at La Rochelle in 1688. They had heard the good news. James II had been overthrown, so it was safe for French Protestants to seek refuge in England. Others wished to violate their safety. For the previous three years, since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (which had helped to cost King James his throne), the Huguenots had been persecuted. Swaggering, bullying dragoons had been billeted in their homes. Now, as the oppressed waited for a sea passage to asylum, their tormentors had a final opportunity to inflict pain. They wielded a branding iron.

My friend Jonathan Gaisman recently gave rise to a profound philosophical question concerning wine. Jonathan is formidably clever. He has a tremendous reputation at the Commercial Bar. Although he brushes aside any compliments from the unqualified, there was a recent case — Excalibur — where his performance won the awed approval of lawyers to whom even he might concede quasi-peer status. They aver that his preparation was exemplary, his cross-examination ruthless and relentless; his triumph total. That said, he is anything but a monoglot lawyer. Not only a music lover but a musicologist, modesty alone would prevent him from claiming that Nihil artium a me alienum. Among the minor arts, he is a practised oenologist.

‘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 of mature Rieussec.

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 wars. The family lost relatives during that cruel necessity, the Allied bombing of Normandy to expedite D-Day.

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 my determination to lose weight and my audience responds with unalloyed scepticism.

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 Fifth International: the pseudo-liberal bureaucratic one.