David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

‘I don’t suppose Tristram has offered to marry you,’ Georgina said to her daughter, thinking how very unpleasant it might be to have that young man as an intimate member of her family.

‘He said he wouldn’t,’ said Emily. ‘I mean, I like Tristram well enough, but I’m not sure I’d want to spend the rest of my life with him.’

‘Indeed,’ said her mother firmly. ‘Now, this is what we must do. I am going to put in train a great deal of social organization, dinner parties, dances, balls, everything I can think of. And you, my child, are going to have a whirlwind romance. You have to be bowled over as you have never been bowled over before. Remember always, you need to be at the altar in about six weeks’ time. The young man must have the normal number of arms and legs, that sort of thing. Brains would be an advantage but are not essential. We do not have the time to indulge ourselves with good looks, but don’t turn them down if they come your way. You must do anything, and I mean anything, Emily, to persuade a young man to marry you. And you must do it quickly.’

Sir Pericles Freme was clanking as he walked across the Powerscourt hall towards the Powerscourt dining room. Powerscourt himself, speeding down the stairs to meet his guest, thought he sounded rather like the milkman nearing the end of his round. The dining room was on the ground floor, looking out over Markham Square. There was a long Georgian table with elegant candles. The highlight of the room was a full-length portrait of one of Lady Lucy’s ancestors, a general who had served in the American War of Independence. Lady Lucy’s family always maintained that the work was by the hand of Sir Joshua Reynolds and certainly the painting did have something of the swagger and panache of another Reynolds soldier, Colonel Banastre Tarleton, in the National Gallery. Powerscourt had never been sure. Rhys, the Powerscourt butler, was waiting for instructions by the far side of the fireplace.

‘Sir Pericles, how good of you to come,’ said Powerscourt, directing his guest to a chair at the far end of the table. Freme carried out a brief inspection of the general on the wall, nodded as if in posthumous salute, and drew four bottles out of his bag.

‘I changed my modus operandi halfway through this inquiry,’ he began, in the manner of a man telling a friend he has changed his golf swing. ‘That is to say, I decided it might be more illuminating to compare some Colville wines with those of their fellow wine merchants rather than my earlier policy of comparing Colville bottles of today with Colville bottles of earlier years.’

‘Now then,’ Sir Pericles began fiddling about in his bag for a corkscrew, ‘you might think that there is a risk attached to this new policy. How do we know that our other man is a man of probity, that what he calls claret actually is claret? What do you say to that, Powerscourt, eh?’ The old soldier looked sternly at his host.

‘I can only suppose that you are certain that your other claret is the real thing, if you can be certain? Forgive me, Sir Pericles, how many glasses do you think we need? Rhys here can bring them in directly.’

‘Let’s be on the safe side and say a dozen. And could we have some cold water? Now then, this house claret here,’ he pointed to the bottle closest to him, ‘comes from Berry Bros. amp; Rudd. It is the cheapest blend they sell. I have compared it with the same sort of wine from other reputable and rather expensive merchants and they all taste, more or less, the same.’

There was a loud plop as Sir Pericles opened his two bottles of claret in quick succession. Right on cue, Rhys slipped back into the room with the glasses and the water. Sir Pericles poured a small measure from each bottle into a couple of glasses.

‘Now then,’ he swirled the wine around in his glasses, ‘people talk an awful lot of rot about wine, always have. Imbibo, ergo sum . Shouldn’t be surprised if the bloody Romans hadn’t warbled away in their best Latin about heads and bouquets and such nonsense. Probably picked it up from the Greeks. Dodgy morals, those Greeks, always thought so. But I digress. The thing to do, Powerscourt, is to remember what it tastes like. That’s all. Then have a go at the other chap and see if you think they’re from the same family. That’s all we have to do. For God’s sake don’t talk about fruit.’

Raising his glass to the general on the wall, Sir Pericles took a slug of the Berry Bros. amp; Rudd glass and swallowed it. Powerscourt was relieved to see he hadn’t spat it out on to the floor. He didn’t think Lucy would have approved. There might not be many domestic implements not present in the Markham Square household, but spittoons, unfortunately on this occasion, were among them. Powerscourt followed suit. The second glass with the Colville wine followed fairly quickly afterwards.

‘Now then, I’m not going to put words into your mouth, Powerscourt, but tell me what you think.’ Sir Pericles began clearing his palate with a glass of water. Powerscourt paused for a moment.

‘Well,’ he said at last, feeling rather nervous, as if his history essay was being marked by the headmaster in person, ‘there’s definitely a difference. The Berry claret is smoother and maybe richer than the other one. The Colville wine tastes a bit rougher, in my opinion. Maybe the grapes were on the wrong side of the hill.’

‘Well done, Powerscourt, I couldn’t have put it better myself. The question we now have to ask ourselves is whether the Colville offering is a claret at all.’ Sir Pericles took another quick glass of water and rummaged again in his bag. ‘Just one more. On the assumption that the Berry claret is the real thing, we can, I think, safely hazard a guess that this other bottle which says it is a claret will also be a claret. Justerini amp; Brooks, round the corner from Berry’s in St James’s. Let me just pour a couple of glasses of that for us.’

Freme poured two more glasses. Powerscourt suddenly wondered if Johnny Fitzgerald, with his greater experience of quaffing wine in vast quantities, might not have been the better man for this particular job. Sir Pericles and Powerscourt took substantial sips of the latest offering from London’s finest and put their glasses down at virtually the same time.

‘Well?’ said the little man.

‘The same as the Berry one, I should say,’ said Powerscourt, wiping his lips with his handkerchief. ‘I don’t mean it’s exactly the same, but I should say it’s as if they both went to the same school or were taught to sing by the same master.’

‘Capital, we’ll make a connoisseur out of you yet.’ Sir Pericles peered briefly into his bag as if another half-dozen bottles were waiting inside. ‘But you see our difficulty, the general difficulty in the authentication of wines. You and I both think that two of these bottles are claret and the other one probably isn’t. Two other people might take a contrary view. We could pay to have some wine supremos from Bordeaux to give their view on the problem, but they might not agree either. Some of these so-called experts are always reluctant to taste wines blind because they will often get it wrong.’

‘Tell me, Sir Pericles, what do you think the Colville wine actually is? Does it have any claret in there at all?’

‘It’s certainly a blend of something,’ said Sir Pericles, ‘maybe there’s a bit of claret in there somewhere to give it a base. Then there’s probably a whole lot of cheap red from Languedoc and may be a dash of Algerian if it lacks body. The blender will have to change his proportions every year to keep each year’s taste as close as he can to the taste of the year before- even cheap Languedoc isn’t going to be the same in 1908 as it was in 1907. They don’t have a problem with the labels, they put their own on. The stuff is probably cooked up somewhere in the Medoc and shipped from there. It’ll add to the authentic look if the wine has been parcelled up and sent over here by some dodgy shippers or merchants in or near Bordeaux.’