Bruce Anderson

The wines change, and we change with them. It is 1980, in Washington, and a girl gives me a bottle of 1974 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon reserve as a birthday present. It would have been churlish not to drink it together, though I feared it would be too young. It was; much too young: too young, even, for Jimmy Savile. It was like eating green strawberries. Not that I admitted this to my companion. Knowing nothing about wine, she thought six years was old. If it lacked immediate appeal, she blamed her own lack of sophistication. Anyway, it was a pleasant evening. Last week, an oenophile gathering, and a merchant produces a bottle of the same wine which he had picked up in a cheap mixed-case purchase. 1974 had been an excellent year in California.

Like many soldiers, my old friend is a life-enhancing character. Whenever he phones up and says ‘Need your help’, one’s spirits rise. The help always seems to involve pleasure. This time was no exception. He was long on some young-ish wine, and wondered whether a few cases ought to be redeployed via the sale-room. In his comfortably stocked cellar, I reminded him that Andrew Lloyd Webber used to say ‘Goodnight, boys’ as he switched out the lights on his magnificent collection of Rhône. This had aroused ridicule — perhaps even a mention in Pseud’s Corner — but I could see the point. A great cellar is an epiphany. It almost invites a salutation. My companion agreed, though insisting that he had no plans to speak to his more modest array.

British education has a lot to apologise for. Over the decades, our schools not only blocked their pupils’ access to literacy, numeracy and serious examinations. They perverted their taste in food. This was as true in the public schools as in the state system. Think of the liver we had to eat. Fried until it could have been used to sole a boot, but not enough to remove those evil-looking tubes. Where did that liver come from: mule, blaspheming Jew? By and large, the boys cleaned their plates; schoolboys will eat anything. But in those days girls were equally coarsely fed. Someone ought to write a PhD correlating the incidence of anorexia to the way that British girls’ schools served offal. I know females who still refuse to touch it, except in foie gras: stuff the geese.

A miserable day: grey, grizzling, drizzly — October going on February. Our host had reluctantly given up the crazy idea of lunch in the garden; the first guests helped him move the tables and chairs inside. It may have been an attempt to warm ourselves against winter, but the talk turned to Italy, further stimulated by someone spotting a copy of David Gilmour’s In Pursuit of Italy. In the event of your not having devoured it already, a treat awaits you. We agreed there is a basic distinction in the way that one thinks about Italy, and about France. Although there are vast differences between the French regions, there is an ultimate unity; there lives the dearest Frenchness deep down things. There is a France profonde.

There was a girl who had a goat. By the standards of her species, she (the goat, that is) was not excessively surly or truculent. She permitted herself to be milked, and rarely butted the milkmaid. The girl turned the milk into cheese. News of this reached Peter Rich. Peter, who runs Jeroboams, is one of the more important wine and cheese entrepreneurs of our times. He asked for a sample. She sent him four chèvres. He ate one — delicious — and put the other three on the shelves. They quickly vanished, to be scoffed with enthusiasm, and repeat orders. He phoned the goatherd and asked for 24, with the promise of repeat orders. The girl was astonished: ‘But I’ve only got one goat.’ ‘Get more, then,’ barked Peter.

A Lincolnshire farmer died and went to Heaven. St Peter told him that there was a custom. Over dinner on his first evening, the new arrival would give a talk to the Heavenly Host on a great world event during his lifetime. ‘That’s easy,’ said the farmer: ‘the Lincolnshire floods in 1953.’ Peter was incredulous. ‘The Lincolnshire floods in 1953. Was that a great world event?’ ‘It certainly was. I lost six sheep. Jan Stewer lost 12 sheep, and six cows. Further down the valley, a man was drowned.’ Super Hanc Petram, who had heard enough about Lincolnshire to last an eternity-time, interrupted the flood. ‘Very well. But do remember: your audience will include Noah.

Caviar feasts stay in the memory. I remember one occasion when I scoffed a satisfactory quantity of the stuff with that old monster Bob Maxwell. As he wanted a favour, he was the acme of charm and encouraged me to dig in to a tin of beluga ‘given to me by President Gorbachev himself’. At that, I thought I saw the butler twitch. I gathered from others that the Gorbachev tin was in constant use for favoured guests, so there were only three conclusions. First, that Mr Gorbachev was using a sizeable proportion of Russia’s GDP to fund Bob’s entertaining. Second, that Bob had discovered the philosopher’s stone, or at least a moulin mystique, for caviar. Third, that he had a daily order from Fortnum & Mason, paid for out of the pension funds.

A double magnum is a triumphant spectacle. A single bottle of claret looks slender, elegant: a suggestion of a late Gothic spire. In the 15th century, architects bent their efforts to achieve effortlessness: stone sublimated into light; ethereal, disembodied, breath-taking columns, ad maiorem Dei gloriam, shooting upwards like fireworks to make love to the sky: flamboyant. A double magnum rests on firmer foundations. Robust and proud on its massy haunches, this is Atlas or Antaeus, not Ariel. A double magnum is Romanesque, Norman. Far from seeking to conceal power, it revels in it. In its mighty eminence, Durham Cathedral tenses itself on primevally igneous rock, like a crouching lion, overawing the heavens and the earth.

History is duty as well as pleasure. We ought to chronicle our own times, so that posterity will know what manner of men we were. The other night, that thought struck me in the context of John Smith. When it comes to his politics, the task can safely be left to historians; there will be plenty of material. But some crucial records are in danger of effacement. I am referring to the John Smith legal archive. John used to delight his friends with stories drawn from his career as a lawyer. There were, apparently, about 35 of them, and it is time that they were collected, before old men forget. Two follow, both related to drink. In the early 1970s, in a major crime case, John was led by Lionel ­Daiches, a distinguished Scottish silk, the brother of David, the literary critic.

My recent drinking has been straight out of Hopkins: ‘All things original, counter, spare, strange.’ A dinner party in Chinatown ended with mao tai, the Chinese rice spirit. I have never been able to decide about mao tai. It has a nose like a school changing room: some would say, a taste to match. It packs a wallop. At around 86° proof, it can be heartburn in a glass. Girls rarely enjoy it. When mao tai is on offer, even the ones who delight in a Havana with some serious armagnac tend to dodge the column. But a ­digestif ought to pull the strings together: a final movement which makes sense of the symphony.

It is never a good idea for a government to look stupid: least of all now. Yet that is what is happening over Lords reform. Nick Clegg wanted to wreck our currency. He failed. Then he wanted to wreck the voting system: another failure. He has now transferred his wrecking petulance to the House of Lords. He must not be indulged. Damage has already been done. Back in 1997, with heredity constantly reinvigorated by experience and expertise, the Lords worked well. A skilful revising chamber, it could force the Commons to think again, without challenging the supremacy of the elected house. The upper house could defy the government, but only when public opinion was firmly on its side. The hereditaries ensured that land and history had a voice, which lefties hated.

We were discussing the economic arguments of the early 1980s when I had a Proustian madeleine moment. I remembered my first White Lady. It must have been in late 1981. In those days, God help me, I was a self-proclaimed Tory Wet, agreeing with Ian Gilmour that we were heading straight for the rocks. Ian Gow, the most Thatcherite of the Thatcherites, the greatest of all PPSs, an altogether wonderful fellow, summoned me to dinner at the Cavalry Club in an attempt to recall me to the paths of righteousness. To dry out Wets, Ian believed in homeopathic medicine. We started with a White Lady: my first. And another one. And… I lost count. All good drink is moreish, especially white ladies.

These days, Anne Jenkin is one of the Tory party’s grandest dames. David Cameron sent her to the House of Lords as a reward for her efforts to persuade able girls to become Tory MPs — and for trying to keep her husband, Bernard Jenkin, in order: well-deserved, on both counts. Years ago, the Noble Baroness herself was interested in the Lower House. In the early 1980s, to get mud on her Pradas, she stood for Glasgow Glottal Stop and was brave enough to hold a public meeting. A glowering member of the public fired a question: ‘Whit’s the can’date think aboot fizz?’ Anne leant forward, as if looking for the simultaneous translation. ‘Fizz’ was repeated, in even more menacing tones.

I have drunk the Hallelujah Chorus. It was in Cambridge, circa 1970. I was walking back to College, past the 1950s extension to the University Arms hotel, a work of striking ugliness, even by the standards of postwar Cambridge architecture. Like Handel, I felt the heavens open, but not to see the face of God: merely the successor to Noah’s Flood. I fled into the hotel. It was divine providence. Waiting for the heavens to close, I nursed a pint of pasteurised gas. This was in the days before Camra, the campaign for real ale. Over the past 40 years, the culture wars have gone badly for conservatism. But there is an exception: proper beer. There is also an irony. One of Camra’s early leaders was Roger Protz, a Trotskyite. One is glad that he escaped the ice-pick.

Why sheep? As a small boy, that thought sometimes occurred to me after a Church of Scotland service. In a Presbyterian dies irae, the Minister would have proclaimed the Son of Man’s intention to divide mankind into sheep and goats on the Day of Judgment. Afterwards, my parents explained that the goats were the bad guys. That struck me as odd. Goats were much more interesting than sheep. I often found it hard to get my head around the pastoral elements of Christianity. Most children are made to wriggle with embarrassment as their elders re-tell some charming incident from earlier years. In my case, it was an aunt trying to explain about the Good Shepherd. I had thought that she was talking about shepherd’s pie. Not an anima naturaliter Christiana.

There was a wonderful old girl called Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The daughter of the good Roosevelt president, Theodore, she was a formidable Washington political hostess until her nineties. The older she grew, the more fearless she became. By the end, she combined the plain speaking of her Dutch forebears with a wit and sharpness which would have delighted, and intimidated, any salon, anywhere, ever. She also solved one of the greater minor mysteries of the 20th century. If any two human beings were fated to become staunch friends, it ought to have been Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. To win the second world war, Churchill had to get on with the lesser Roosevelt, FDR.

A fanatical fisherman died. On arrival in the next world, he found himself on a river. A ghillie was proffering him a 16ft Hardy. ‘This is the life,’ thought the fisherman. ‘Or, rather, the afterlife.’ Within seconds, he made a perfect cast into enticing water: just the sort of pool which would seduce big fish into lingering. Within a few more seconds, his line was racing, the reel screeching, the rod dipping. Five minutes later, a fresh gleaming 30-pounder was on the bank. With arrogant jaws and an angry, imperious eye, this was no mere salmon. He had caught a lord of the river. ‘O death, where is thy sting?’ A second textbook cast, and a similar outcome. He had landed another fish, worthy to lie beside its confrere.

Back in the Sixties, there was a more than usually sanguinary murder in Glasgow. While the killer was awaiting trial, the Scottish Daily Express decided to buy up his family. This must have been after the days when such a case would end with a good hanging; Alan Cochrane insists that he is not that old. But the newspaper thought that the low-lifers’ tales of the dark and bloody alleyways of the Gorbals would titillate its readers. Alan, then a young reporter, was told to hide the family from rival bidders until judgment day, in some discreet hotel up on Lomond-side. That did not sound a hard posting, until he met the MacTumshies. At the first meal, they sat awkwardly on their chairs and gazed suspiciously at the menus — even the ones who were holding them the right way up.

Not all change is for the worse. Go into any supermarket in search of an urgent bottle of wine, and you will find a range of respectable bottles at reasonable prices. The buyers are experts and they drive hard deals with the suppliers: large orders for low profit margins. A club wine committee on which I serve was once looking for a house chablis. Our stoutly old-fashioned members have not caught up with the current market and still expect to pay very little for an acceptable drop of petit chablis. After tasting some cheap but lamentable bottles, composing fierce missives to the wine merchants who were to blame, and wishing that the cat or horse which they employed in their chablis plant would have an early and final trip to the vet, we ended up buying some from Tesco.

I sniffed and sipped and concentrated. It was a wine to savour, drop by drop. A Grands Echézeaux ’98 from the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, this was not a mere bottle. It was an epiphany. ‘Great hatred, little room’: so Yeats summarised Irish history. We could paraphrase him for the DRC: great prices, little room. The clan chief, Romanée-Conti itself, is only four acres; one wonders what every grape is worth. For a chance to buy the wine, at more than £1,000 a bottle en primeur, you virtually have to be entered on a waiting list at birth. I have only drunk it once. It was in the early Eighties at the Plough in Clanfield, Oxfordshire, where the wine list included a 1965 Romanée-Conti for £30.