When my friend Michael Broadbent, the pioneer wine auctioneer, wrote his Decanter column (he kept it up for over 40 years) he often made life easy for himself by simply telling us where he’d had dinner and what they’d drunk.
I’m not quite so convinced that you’d be interested in the Johnson family consumption, but there are occasions when I can’t resist the urge to make you drool. The other evening a gang calling themselves the Notting Hill Grand Cru Club brought their bottles of Musigny and Chambolle – to me the grandest crus of Burgundy; or if not the very grandest, certainly the sexiest – to the Garrick Club in Covent Garden for an evening of what I can’t honestly describe as sober analysis. The only trouble with getting eight chaps not lacking in confidence round a table with rather more bottles of gorgeous wine is essentially the noise level. By wine four (1er Cru Les Amoureuses from Mugnier), I had to turn off my hearing aids. By wine six I took them out of my ears. I asked one friend to tone it down a bit but I don’t think he heard me.
And the wines? Meursault Charmes 1er Cru from 1976 was our aperitif. Great white Burgundies can sometimes mature without ageing – a tasty paradox. It was big, rich – and still fresh. We ate the first course of salmon canapés standing round the table in the not very spacious private dining room. Then with conspicuous informality we took our seats and passed the red wines round.
I hope some other guest kept constant watch over which wine went into which glass. We had four glasses each and nine red wines. This was not a party with coloured stickers for keeping track. If someone soon suggested a blend of Chambolle Les Fuées and Chambolle les Gruenchers, it was no big deal. I was the only one taking notes – and I soon gave up. The vintages ran from 2005 back to 1982. What does the prudent wine lover do in such circumstances?
He lies back and thinks of France. I let the essence of Musigny weave its spell around me. I had a shot at describing it in my first book, many years go. ‘More delicate than Chambertin’, I said it was. True. ‘The sweet savouriness of Burgundy comes out in it more than in any other wine. It lingers and spreads in your mouth with its bouquet of flavours-within-flavours.’ Totally inadequate.