Peter Mayle - A Good Year

Max felt like a voyeur spying on a profoundly personal moment. Over the years of their friendship, he had always been amused by the passion with which Charlie attacked his hobbies, from skateboarding when they were at school to last year’s preoccupation with karate. Now it seemed that wine had taken over. Max smiled at the expression of purest pleasure that had spread across Charlie’s face. “So far so good?” asked Max.

Charlie ignored him. “Now for the pleasures of mouth, tongue, and palate.” He took a sip of wine, holding it in his mouth while he sucked in a little air, making a discreet lapping sound. For a few seconds his jaw went up and down as though he were chewing, and then he swallowed. “Mmm,” he said. “The final step is appreciation. Messages from the palate to the brain. Thoughts of the wine still to come.” He nodded to the sommelier. “That’ll do nicely. You can let it breathe for a while. No, we can do better than that-you can let it regain its composure.”

“Very impressive,” said Max. “You had me on the edge of my seat. Is that what you learned in the wine-tasting course?”

Charlie nodded. “Elementary stuff, but it’s surprising what a difference it makes-just taking the time to concentrate on what you’re drinking. And we’re in luck tonight. I had a look at the menu while I was waiting, and there’s saddle of lamb. Terrific with a great Bordeaux. And I thought we might start with a few blinis to go with the rest of the champagne. How does that sound?”

The congealed chops of Max’s lunch with Amis seemed a long way away. “Sounds like the ideal diet for an unemployed man.”

Charlie dismissed the problem with a wave of his hand. “You’ll be fine. Anyway, there’s your inheritance. You’re part of the landed gentry now. Tell me about the chateau.”

“The house, Charlie, the house.” Max was silent for a moment, looking back into his memory. “It’s quite old; goes back to the eighteenth century, I think, what they call down there a bastide, which is a step or two up from a farmhouse. Big rooms, high ceilings, tiled floors, tall windows, thick walls. I remember it was always cool indoors. Cool, and actually a bit of a mess. Uncle Henry wasn’t too fussy about housework. A wonderful old dear used to come on a bicycle once a week and rearrange the dust in between drinks. She was always catatonic by lunchtime. There was a little scullery behind the kitchen where she used to sleep it off in the afternoon.”

Charlie nodded. “Probably still there. Now come on, give me something an estate agent could get his teeth into: number of bedrooms, reception rooms, bathrooms-I take it there’s what we in the trade call indoor sanitation facilities-lavish appointments, architectural features, turrets, crenellations, that sort of thing.” He leaned back to allow the waiter to serve the caviar blinis, and the interrogation stopped while they ate the golden, savory pancakes, a perfect foil for the glistening mounds of black, salty bubbles that burst in the mouth.

“I could get used to this,” said Max, as he wiped his plate clean. “Do you think it would taste as good if it were called fish eggs?”

Charlie dabbed his mouth with his napkin, and finished his champagne. “Not another drop of wine do you get until you give me some more details. Furnish me with particulars, old son. Furnish me with particulars.”

“Furnish you? God, you’re beginning to sound like a property ad in Country Life. ” Charlie grinned, and nodded in agreement as Max continued. “It’s been a long time since I was there. Years, actually. Let’s see. I remember a library with a huge stuffed bear in it, a dining room we never used because we always ate in the kitchen, an enormous vaulted sitting room, a wine cellar…”

“Good, good,” said Charlie. “Always a most desirable feature.”

“… a row of attics that ran the length of the third floor of the house…”

“Not attics, Max. Staff accommodation,” murmured Charlie. “Excellent. Plenty of room for the odd maid and butler.”

“… 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.