Wine

Jonathan Ray reckons size matters and finds himself wrong footed by the supermarkets. So there I was at my birthday supper. Marina, bless her, had done all the grub and I’d done the wine. We had 20 folk round the table, some keen on their wine and some keen on, well, just drinking. Indeed, the ones with the most highly polished drinking boots seemed pretty indifferent as to what it was exactly that they drank so long as they drank something. We started with a selection of fine English fizz that I had amassed during my whistle-stop tour of the wineries of West Sussex and Surrey (see Browsing and Sluicing…) and excellent they were too. We can finally bury the notion that English sparkling wine is second to champagne.

To get himself in shape for the forthcoming Spectator St. George’s Day trip to Chapel Down Winery in Kent, Jonathan Ray spends a weekend in the wine-lands of Sussex and Surrey. It’s one of life’s greatest pleasures, taking one’s car across the Channel and pootling about Champagne, say, or the Loire Valley or Alsace, Burgundy, Bordeaux or even down to the Rhône. You know the form. You toss a coin to choose the day’s designated driver and then simply lurch from winery to winery, cellar door to cellar door, restaurant to restaurant. In no time at all you’re delightfully squiffy, your shirt buttons are popping and the car boot is full of clanking bottles. Bliss!

Ronnie Corbett was an absolute gent, one of the nicest of men and hilarious company. He was self-deprecating, courteous and genuinely charming with an endless stream of anecdotes and a fine line in dirty limericks. He loved his wine and, although he denied it, was very knowledgeable about it. I met him about ten years ago when I interviewed him over lunch. We kept loosely in touch thereafter, enjoying the occasional very liquid lunch together, usually in the company of his just-as-funny-and-almost-as-ribald wife, Anne. I remember we got through an awful lot of Théophile Roederer champagne at Scott’s before tucking into some Yarra Yering Chardonnay from Australia’s Yarra Valley, Ronnie’s choice.

Which is worse – to take an expensive wine to a party (“Oh, how sweet of you!”) only for the host to snaffle it away, or to take a lousy one (“Oh, um, thanks….”), and be publicly humiliated as it is placed next to the cooking sherry? Of course, in our parents’ day it was considered terribly naff, even insulting, to take a bottle, just as it was to take flowers or chocolates.  You simply presented yourself, had a nice time, wrote a fulsome letter of thanks the following morning and then sent flowers or chocolates. Nowadays, though, a bottle is de rigueur.  But what should you take?  The simple answer, of course, is to take a wine you would like to drink yourself.  Take something ghastly and it may come back to haunt you.

Yet again wine drinkers get it straight in the goolies from the Chancellor. Duty on wine will rise with inflation while that on beer, cider and spirits will remain as it is, having been cut last year. We endure almost the highest duty levels in the EU (after yesterday’s announcement, duty has risen to £2.08 per 75cl bottle, up from £2.05) and when one tots up the fixed costs of a bottle of £4.99 wine – the glass, the capsule, the label, the import costs, the profit margin, the VAT, the new rate of duty and so on – the value of the actual wine inside will be no more than 45 pence and will quite likely be as little as 11 pence, depending on which figures you believe.

I’m one of those sad folk who rather likes airline food. On those rare occasions I get to turn left, of course, never when I get to turn right. Don’t be daft. And now that they are finally taking it seriously, I rather like airline wine. Food and drink might only be ninth or tenth on our list of concerns when we book our flight, but by the time we stand at the aircraft’s door it’s second only to who we’re going to sit next to (please God not beside that fat man or that bawling baby). Once we finally buckle our seatbelt, however, our only worry is what we’re going to eat and drink. The major airlines are among the biggest of all purchasers of wine.

We had a fine Spectator Winemaker Dinner just before Christmas, hosted by the inimitable Richard Geoffroy, Chef de Cave at the equally inimitable Dom Pérignon. Richard brought with him ample amounts of his spectacular fizz: the 2005, the 2004 Rosé and the P2 1998. We ate and drank royally and there wasn’t a person there who wasn’t seduced by the magic of Dom Pérignon. It might not be as exclusive and as rare as Moët & Chandon (whose prestige cuvée it is) would have us believe, but my goodness it’s a belter, up there with the very, very finest. Richard insists that his champagne be served from red wine glasses.

Berry Bros & Rudd is the grand old man of St. James’s, family-owned and still trading from the very spot it in which it was established in 1698. Berrys’ has the most innovative and informative website of any wine merchant, anywhere in the world, and boasts an unrivalled seven Masters of Wine. Corney & Barrow is one of the UK’s bluest of blue chip wine merchants with an agency list to die for, including Champagne Salon, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Château Pétrus. But they work hard at the other end of their list too and their range of house wines is one of spectacular value. Mr Wheeler in Colchester is an off-shoot of the much-loved The Wine Company and remains in the hands of fifth and sixth generation wine merchant Wheelers.