“… I think there were half a dozen bedrooms and two or three bathrooms. Oh, and a grass tennis court and outbuildings, barns and things like that. A courtyard with an old fountain.”
“I can see it now. Sounds to me like a stately home. General state of repair and decoration? Has the refurbisher been around in the last hundred years or so?”
Max shook his head.
“No? Well, they’ve probably been keeping him busy in the Cotswolds. So how would you describe the interiors?”
“Not great. You know, slightly shabby.”
It was Charlie’s turn to shake his head. “No, no, Max. We don’t call it shabby. We call it the patina and faded charm of a bygone age.”
“Of course, right. Well, there’s plenty of that.”
The lamb arrived, moist and tender. The wine was poured, admired, and sipped. Charlie, his nose still hovering over his glass, looked up at Max. “How would you rate it?”
Max took another sip, rolling the wine around his mouth as Charlie had done. “Bloody good. Bloody good.”
Charlie raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Won’t do, old son. You can’t describe a work of art like that. You’ve got to brush up on the jargon, the connoisseur’s vocabulary.” He held up one hand, anticipating Charlie’s reaction. “I know, I know. You’re always saying we talk a lot of crap in the property business. But believe me, we’re just beginners compared to the wine boys.” He struck a pose, holding his glass by its base and swirling it gently. “Do I detect faded tulips? Beethoven in a mellow mood? The complexity, the almost Gothic structure…” He grinned at the expression on Max’s face. “I’ve never heard such a lot of twaddle in my life, but that’s the way some of them bang on.”
He then told Max about the first meeting of the Young Connoisseurs’ Club, which he had been invited to join by Billy, his friend in the wine trade. Half a dozen young men-enthusiastic drinkers, but by no means connoisseurs-had gathered in a set of dignified chambers in St. James’s, the headquarters of an old established firm of shippers. Here, amidst the spittoons and flickering candles, beneath portraits of the bewhiskered gentlemen who had founded the firm, they were to sample wines from a few of the lesser-known chateaux in Bordeaux, and one or two promising upstarts from Australia and California.
Their host, Billy, was young, as wine merchants go. He had been taken into the firm when his more elderly colleagues had realized that their equally elderly customers were buying less wine, often as a result of natural causes (or, as some would say, death). Billy’s mission was to find younger, thirstier souls with a good thirty or forty years of drinking ahead of them, to educate them, and, naturally, to make them faithful clients. Charlie was in the first batch, eager but ignorant, and Billy started the proceedings by demonstrating the basic steps of tasting. Watch me, he told his audience, and do as I do.
The pupils had been rather puzzled to see that the first part of the ritual involved Billy’s tie, an ornamental polka-dot creation made of thick Jermyn Street silk. He carefully tucked the end into the waistband of his trousers, advising the others to do the same.
Next, he picked up his glass, not with a nonchalant grab, but delicately, holding the base of the glass between the thumb and the first two fingers. His class stood lined up in front of him, ties tucked in, glasses at the ready but as yet unfilled, waiting for further instructions.
Swirling, said Billy. You must learn to swirl, to let the air in and allow the wine to breathe. The class imitated as best they could the small circular movements of his hand, swirling make-believe wine in empty glasses and beginning to feel faintly ridiculous. It was to get worse before it got better.
The class held their empty glasses up to the candlelight, to appreciate the imaginary subtleties of color in their imaginary wine. They applied their noses to the empty glasses, breathing in the imaginary bouquet. They took an imaginary mouthful and had an imaginary spit, thankful that their ties were out of the way of any imaginary drops. By this time, everyone was ready for a large Scotch, but it was not to be.
At last, Billy poured out the first of the wines to be tasted as he moved on to part two of wine appreciation for beginners. This was in the nature of an anatomy lesson. Wine had a nose, the class was told. Wine had body, wine had legs. Wine had a robe, a bouquet, a personality, an essence. And it was not enough, according to Billy, merely to go through the motions of tasting; one must also know how to describe what one has just tasted. So, as the class dutifully swirled and sipped and spat, Billy provided a running commentary on the wines under review.
The first, so he said, was vigorous and well constructed, even a little bosomy. The second was an iron fist in a velvet glove. The third was a little jagged around the edges, but potentially drinkable. The fourth was a little young to be up so late. And so it went on. As the would-be connoisseurs worked their way through the bottles, the descriptions became more and more outlandish: truffles, hyacinths, hay, wet leather, damp tweed, weasel, hare’s belly, old carpet, vintage socks. Music made a brief appearance, with one wine being compared in its lingering finish to the final notes of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 (the Adagio). Surprisingly, there was never a mention of the main ingredient, presumably because grapes, honest and worthy and indeed essential though they may be, were not considered sufficiently exotic to gain a place in the wine lover’s lexicon.
“That was just the first session,” Charlie said. “It got better after that, and I learned quite a bit.” His face became serious as he stared into the dark red heart of his wine. “It is quite extraordinary, though,” he said, talking more to himself than to Max. “The most elegant drink in the world. When I’ve made my bundle, I shall have this every day. I might even buy a vineyard.” He came out of his reverie and grinned at Max. “And you’ve already got one. Lucky sod.”
“Not for long. I think I’ll have to sell it.”
Charlie winced, then did his best to look stern and businesslike. “Never, ever make a rushed decision about selling land. They’re not making any more of it, or so I’m told. Rent it or sit on it, but don’t get rid of it. In any case, you might be able to make a very tidy living with twenty hectares of vines.”
Max remembered the ocean of green that surrounded the old house. In his memory, there was always a man on a tractor somewhere on the horizon. Uncle Henry referred to him as Russell, but that couldn’t have been his real name. When he came to the house, he brought with him whiffs of garlic and engine oil. Shaking hands with him was like grasping a warm brick.
“I don’t know, Charlie. It’s not a game for amateurs.”
Charlie finished a mouthful of lamb and took a long, considered pull at his glass. “It’s changed, no doubt about that. There’s a guy taking the course who works for one of the really big shippers, and he’s been telling me all kinds of fascinating stuff. Garage wines, for instance. Have you ever heard about garage wines?”
Max shook his head.
“If you want to pull rank, you call them boutique wines, or haute couture wines. Small vineyards, small production, seriously big prices. Le Pin is probably the best known at the moment. Five thousand pounds a case, sometimes more. And that’s wine you won’t be drinking for years. Not bad if you’re the one growing the grapes, is it?” He looked at Max, a forkful of lamb halfway to his mouth. “And you can grow a lot of grapes on twenty hectares.” Charlie gave him the kind of long, significant look-head tilted downward, eyes looking up beneath a frowning forehead-that he used to great effect with girls or when describing a particularly enviable property to his clients.