The Wine Adventurer's blog
Francis Gimblett
28 January 2010 - Spitting in public
A torturous blend of hedonistic heaven and hell yesterday, when, over the course of three hours, my mouth held a heady assortment of the finest years of one of the world’s greatest wines, but I had to spit every drop.
This was not just because of my self-inflicted abstinence for January, but also because it’s bad form at a Masters of Wine tutored tasting to get hammered. It isn’t as frowned upon as smiling however; ejection from the room would surely result should any of these serious chaps dare to smirk. I’m always intrigued by the level of earnest academic deliberation that goes into discussing whether it was a good idea or not to introduce the 1% of Malbec into the blend being tasted. This sort of discussion is often much to the amusement of the visiting winemaker, as he knows it was because he had a bit left over and didn’t know what to do with it, or an intern accidentally blended the wrong cask in, and he knew it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference. Had he not mentioned it nobody would have ever known.
This occasion was a tasting of vintages of Château Leoville Las Cases, one of the Medoc’s top ten Châteaux. Before me on the table were glasses containing some of the best years going back into the eighties, and, as I usually do, I launched into the wines the moment I sat down, much to the disconcertment of those sitting either side of me. I even caught the glare from one of the speakers at the top table at this flagrant departure from etiquette. As they discussed the first wine, I was onto my fourth, and I had finished the tasting before they’d started their third glass. The man on my left looked incredulous that I had even bothered to use the spittoon, and gave me the sort of look he might give an errant Rangers supporter in such circumstances.
I have always tasted this way, ever since I was a salesman in the wine trade. I am only too aware how the commercially minded comments of others will influence us when we are considering something, and if anyone in the wine trade thinks that the owners of the finest Châteaux are any different, they are sadly mistaken. So in order to note down my own opinion of each wine, I needed to do so before it was discussed. This sometimes leads to my view being slightly out of kilter with the majority, but I take solace in the fact that the collective opinion seems to echo that espoused by the individual promoting the wine. Until, that is, a tousle-haired yobbo chooses to voice his own thoughts from the terraces, only to find he is not alone.
With wine, there is subjectivity at every level, and the only thing you can get wrong is not to voice your opinion.
18 January 2010 - Professionals on ice
Haslemere and the surrounding Surrey Hills finally justified the epithet ‘Little Switzerland” over the last fortnight. It was a term the Victorian writers (who flocked to the area when the railway finally cut through in the 1850s) coined when they set up their remote literary community to escape London - the ‘Big Smoke’ that could be seen from Hindhead’s Gibbet Hill on a clear day.
Ever since the last Tyrolean restaurant closed down in the early nineties, replaced by one of the now five pizza joints, I’ve felt ‘little Italy’, or ‘pepperoni peaks’, might be more apt, but the two feet of snow that drew out long-forgotten sledges from the attic and induced folk to ski to work, made Haslemere again the isolated hilltop community of yesteryear. The lawyers and bankers (who later followed the writers to the area, causing the delicate artistic types to move further afield) unable to make it to London, left their pinstripes in the closet, gleefully donning their Berghaus ski gear to join their children flinging themselves down every incline without a plate glass window at the foot. Gleaming 4x4s were of course left cosseted in the garage lest they get dirty, as the car wash was closed.
In the first three town-bound and slush-free days, where snowfall still lined the tips of every bough, people came together: neighbours were reacquainted, friendships forged and impromptu parties held; and, most oddly, people stopped to talk. It was like taking the population of the town and sticking them all on a barge. The pace was determined by the elements, deadlines were forgotten and, for a moment, the most important thing was family and friends.
Then came the calls from offices in the Smoke, untouched by the icy wand that had brought Narnia to the town, and unsympathetic to the perils of driving a new model Range Rover on snow (what if it was hit by some fool in a skidding Prius?) and the spell was broken. But as the denizens of this enclave once again set off on the cleared A3 at the week’s end, the memory of community had been strengthened.
12 January 2010 - Dry but not high
My name is Francis and I am an alcoholic*
I’m nearly half way through my annual dry month – an attempt to cleanse the system after a Christmas that saw me consume the sort of quantity of wine which would make an onlooker from the clergy strongly suspect I was missing the point of the celebrations. (As a religious apathite, I console myself that had we not Christmas, surely we’d need some sort of festival in its place to stoke up the seasonal frenzy of consumer spending that keeps old Blighty afloat?)
Alcohol is often cited as a stimulus for creativity, and it is, in that it suppresses the inhibitions that might otherwise stop us letting loose with our ideas. If we can lose the inhibitions ourselves, we can be more creative naturally. I thought I needed a glass of wine before I stood in front of an audience for my first few years, until one day I did an event where the wines had to be from Tesco. This taught me two important lessons: first, that I wasn’t an alcoholic (as it wasn’t alcohol I craved, just interesting wine); and second, that I could be entertaining without the wine - I’d lost my inhibitions naturally after a short while of doing events.
I’m already feeling fitter, fresher in the mornings, my mind is sharper and I feel more creative. In short, I’m in danger of becoming even more irritating to others and fear that I’ll need a drink in order not to one day turn into Simon Cowell.
*But only when I drink.
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