Wine

There have been few more momentous weeks in British history, or indeed in world history. This commentator must plead guilty. To draw on George Bush Jr, I mis-underestimated Liz Truss and appear to have made the same mistake about Ukraine. That said, we should all be relieved when the war is over on favourable terms, and tactical nukes have remained an item in Russian military doctrine, without becoming part of military practice. Another mis-underestimation has now been corrected, one hopes permanently. Though I was never guilty, the former Prince of Wales had not received the respect that was his due. That is not true of King Charles III. Throughout the United Kingdom, his first coronation has already taken place, in his loyal subjects’ hearts. The Queen is dead.

August may not be the cruellest month but it is often the most dangerous one. Now that it is over, and rosé is giving way to grouse, we can console ourselves. There has not been a world war. We merely face a number of middle--ranking crises. Over fortifying bottles, I was chatting about such matters with friends who had known the late Peter Inge, a dominating figure even by field marshal standards. It was said that in his company, brigadiers’ coffee cups would rattle with tension. I once taxed him with the contrast between his reputation as a martinet’s martinet and his geniality in private life.

Hugh Johnson’s classic World Atlas of Wine, first published in the early 1970s, is now up to its eighth edition. My edition, the sixth, was published in 2007. It is 400 pages long and has exactly one page devoted to the wine of the United Kingdom. The latest edition is 16 pages longer but it, too, devotes only one page to British wine. Wine has a long history in the British Isles. Like so many good things (q.v. Monty Python’s Life of Brian), wine was brought by the Romans, who planted vines wherever they could grow (and some places they couldn’t). The Domesday Book, William the Conqueror’s big tax-planning guide, lists 40 vineyards in England.

Even in recent heat, the English summer can be magical. As long as there is shade, a pool and a steady supply of cooling wine, there is so much to enjoy. Trees, flowers, songbirds, butterflies: dolce far niente works here too. But thinking can be the snake which insinuates itself into Eden. Susan Hill’s Simon Serrailler books are always excellent train reading and the latest was no exception, even if the principal character always puts one in mind of Turner’s supposed reply to someone who said that they had never seen a sunset like the one which he had painted. ‘But don’t you wish you could?’ It is hard to believe that there are many actual policemen like Simon Serrailler – more’s the pity. There are other reasons for pity.

Imagine a camel train, crossing the great desert. The remaining water is rancid; the beasts’ humps are shrunken. Death looms. Then suddenly, there is the sound of a fountain plashing and the scent of sherbet. Old Abdullah, who has done the journey often, as he has been reminding everyone for ten days and making his companions increasingly homicidal, is vindicated. The oasis is at hand. Although Londoners, afflicted by heat, may feel affinity with those sons of the desert, our conditions are not so dire. For a start, there are many more oases, in the form of bars or clubs. That brings us to Pimm’s, that admirable method of rehydration. According to the sources, Mr Pimm invented the drink to accompany oysters. Eh?

In the battle of ideas, it is sometimes necessary to make a tactical withdrawal. That is now the case over climate change. This should not be confused with a full retreat. But in the circumstances, those who insist on the need for lifestyle changes have a point, at least when it comes to wine. Some time ago, I propounded a dictum. Rosé should only be drunk south of Lyon. One could start quite early – 10.30 perhaps, opening the first bottle while brushing away the final crumbs of croissant. Apart from a very few serious wines, it would not matter if the stuff were cooled to ice-lolly temperature. But in this heat, there is no shame in quaffing rosé in England. Other wines can be problematic. Freedom and whisky gang thegither.

One could get used to this. I come from seafaring stock, albeit distant. ‘Anderson’ suggests Viking antecedents, especially as my forebears came from the Shetland Islands. Yet there must have been something wrong with the first Anderson. Other Vikings reached Normandy, Sicily, even Byzantium. At the very least, they found the odd monastery to plunder. Later, their Norman descendants compensated for cultural destruction with cultural creation. But to endure the rigours of crossing from Norway and then disembark on Shetland? Was my remote ancestor seasick, or mutinous, or did he rape the cabin boy? We will never know. A millennium or so later, life at sea was rather different. We were on a yacht, cruising between Sardinia and Corsica.

In the West End of London there is an alley which insinuates its way between the Charing Cross Road and St Martin’s Lane. It is called Cecil Court, and the Salisbury pub is close at hand. Those are clues. The area around Cecil Court has been owned by the Salisbury branch of the Cecil family since the 17th century. For a long period, it was not a salubrious area. At least one local was hanged. Others were transported. There may have been a whorehouse or two. The ambience resembled a cross between Fagin’s kitchen and Mistress Quickly’s Boar’s Head, with Doll tearing the sheets. Then everything changed, thanks to Victorian morality and political pressure. The Third Marquess of Salisbury was a devout churchman as well as a prime minister.

Mixing red wine with Coca-Cola would have the great Roger Scruton turning in his grave. He wrote the wonderful book I Drink Therefore I am: A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine about the purity and life-enhancing joy of drinking wine properly. 'It enacts for us the primal unity of soul and body—the heart-warming liquid stirs us to meditation, seeming to bring with it messages that are addressed to the soul,' argued Scruton. Indeed, as I learned on my Camino through the vineyards of Spain and Portugal, imbibing for 11 months endless variations of remarkably affordable quality wines across the Iberian Peninsular, we are truly blessed to have wine. It was, after all, the centre piece of Jesus's first miracle at the marriage ceremony in Cana.