pounds, a very gentlemanly sum) – but, for the case of six, it’s £134,307 … and 36p. Where is the sophistication in spending the price of a small house on wine, and then quibbling about 36p? A bag of crisps with your drink, sir?
But we no longer live in a gentlemanly age. Wine prices, with their percentages of duty, VAT and margin, are presumably calculated by computer, resulting in the absurdities above. And we invariably pay by card, so the assistant only has to tap in four digits, be they 1499 or 1500, and has no need to consider any of the physical aspects of coins versus notes.
Nevertheless, I would feel less of a bargain hunter, and more of a gentleman, if that single penny were added to the price of a bottle. A £15 bottle of claret has more ring to it than one at £14.99. Whether or not it tastes like a Fine Wine, it feels more like one.
I would like a Hundred-Pound Bottle of Champagne, please.
And not a penny less.
CJ
Well, the wife had the bright idea of ordering a load of cheap fizz in time for Christmas in order to keep the family lightly gassed throughout the nightmare we know as the Festive Period.
She found some Tesco Cava Brut going for a fantastic around-£4-a-bottle special online deal and ordered two cases. Then the snow fell and the UK came to a halt, all of our booze with it. No one knew where it was, not us, not Tesco. It might have been marooned in a delivery hub in Warrington, possibly not. Christmas edged nearer, no drink; Tesco promised pitifully that it would arrive in time for Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve came and went, as did Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the New Year holiday. Nothing.
Our grog finally turned up, quite unexpectedly, in mid-January. Good news was that they delivered vastly more than we’d asked for, presumably as an apology. No no, we cried as the light was blotted out by mountains of cardboard boxes, some mistake, but the delivery guys just shrugged and heaped the cases up in the hallway. Not only that, but Tesco threw in some fancier cavas (Cordoníu and Marques de Monistrol, 2006 vintage), I assume because they’d run out of the rock-bottom stuff we’d actually ordered.
Bad news too, because of course by mid-January everyone had checked into rehab to get over Christmas, and there was no possibility of our even beginning to drain the cava lake that had suddenly welled up in our lives. Moreover, it is now the end of March, and we still have thirty-two bottles to get through, and with the best will in the world, I am starting to struggle.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the basic Tesco Cava, as long as you chill it to death. I know a guy who once worked with the Freixenet company and he was told (by the boss, indeed) that the way to serve cava was to chill it so much that ice crystals formed in the glass as you poured it. Which is terrific if you’re in, say, Madrid, on a hot June night, less so in England in winter. Still, after some trial and error, my routine is to get the Tesco product down to a hairsbreadth above absolute zero, and what do I find but a nice prickly mousse, followed by a hint of burnt caramel on the tongue, then a ferocious poof as it expands rapidly across the floor of the mouth like a CO2 fire extinguisher, leaving only a chesty rasp in its wake. It passes the time very nicely, especially when you consider what we paid.
Then I get bored. I still have over thirty bottles to get through, and how long does this stuff keep? PK suggests six months, but that’s counting from January, which means I now have four months in which to neck my thirty bottles, which is roughly two bottles a week, and even with help from the wife and anyone else around, I don’t think I have that much frivolity in me. So I try to trick myself into thinking the Tesco Cava is something else, not cava, by adding things to it.
Not the home-made sloe gin which No. 1 son once used to make an intriguing champagne cocktail, only to discover that it produced a lethal fizzy syrup, a kind of psycho cherryade. No, I have professional kit, charitably donated in second-hand form by our French friends, in the shape of an almost-empty bottle of cassis; some Crème de Figue, similarly used; and a bottle of Crème de Pêche, almost untouched, which should have told me something.
As it turns out, the cassis is the only one I can look forward to without apprehension. It may have gone a bit brown in colour and have a certain amount of jammy horror around the neck, but Tesco Cava + elderly cassis = quite a funky sensation of cloves and gravy browning, oddly warming in the context of the frigid cava. The Figue, by way of contrast, while starting off with a promising chocolaty introduction, turns fairly quickly into a garbled story of deodorant, granulated sugar and aircraft dope. I want to like it, being the nearest in character to that slinky Crème de Noisette you sometimes find, but is it an inferior brand? Inherent nastiness? Something morbid turns the Figue into a drink occupying the narrow isthmus that connects the unusual to the merely weird, and I cannot bring myself to love it.
But at least it’s not the Crème de Pêche. Peaches are lovely things. The label alone enchants. So why has it been barely touched? Well, as it turns out, it breaks new ground in potable filth. I get as far as discovering that yes, drain cleaner and marzipan can be found in the form of an alcoholic drink, before reflexively tipping the rest down the sink, an action I almost never perform in the real world. Toxic is the only word.
And then I sit and stare angrily at the still fairly full Crème de Pêche bottle, and at the thirty remaining Tesco Cavas. Who would have thought it could be so challenging?
PK
There is a nearby wine merchant posh enough to have an ampersand in its name. The manager has the physique of those nourished without a concern for cash, contained within an inevitable striped shirt. He sweeps out from behind the counter to intercept visitors, with an extraordinary combination of the grovelling of Uriah Heep and the swagger of a Pall Mall club porter (‘Are you entitled to be here, sir?’). And before one can orientate oneself between the Bordeaux and the bargain bins, he asks: ‘Can I help you?’
No. You cannot help me. I am not looking for anything specific; I am browsing. I do not need to be monitored like a potential shoplifter, and I certainly do not wish to be escorted around the shelves to the accompaniment of a running commentary. There may be a purchase somewhere in the offing, but at the moment, thank you very much, I am just looking.
What is the point of ‘just looking’ at wines that are created in order to drink?
Well, first, an education. Have you ever compared the colour of five vintages of Château d’Yquem? Did you know they make half-bottles of Château Lynch-Bages? Have you noticed how the Rothschilds are inspired by the style of the Lafite label on their lesser wines? Or the undiscovered wines which carry in small type the names of winemakers like Moueix and Chapoutier? These are all things I have learnt through browsing.
I have remembered more about the relative prices of wines, regions and vintages by browsing than I ever have from lists. Somehow the visual element of a label, on a bottle, in a store registers those things more clearly in my mind.
Browsing gives you a good indication of the nature of a merchant. The presence of one or two great wines on their shelves establishes benchmarks, of price, good taste, long-standing and industry connections, which
