I’ll write those three most hated dinner party words again, “London house prices”. Like Glenda Slagg in Private Eye, aren’tcha sick of ’em?
I only mention this because I have realised that my monthly credit card limit is the same as my first mortgage. A case of decent claret costs almost as much as my first flat. This, of course, is tactically inserted to coax better wine out of my hosts and hostesses. Honourable exceptions are Wanda and Rob in whose houses, sprinkled around the UK, France and California I have drunk much, much better wine than I am accustomed to. On one occassion Jancis Robinson was also a guest of theirs and they raised the bar, so to speak, even higher than usual.
It is a dilemma. One school of thought is that you should not splash out on expensive wine and then you won’t know what you are missing. Another theory, put forward to me by one of the founders of quite large, oil trading company, Mercuria, is that it is a real chore drinking all those good wines which are mature. Moreover, it becomes harder to appreciate them as you have to knock them back every night without any plonk for comparison.
Please don’t get the wrong idea. At Blog Bellew the consumption may be high but it seldom costs more than £10 a bottle and yet is of a perfectly acceptable standard. So this leads me back to when I took out my first mortgage and decent wine cost little more than £5 a bottle. Now wine costs much the same and the quality has improved. To get a roof over your head in London is another story. I read recently in the 1930s a bottle of whisky was a week’s pay for a labourer; now, it takes less than an hour to get smashed on a bottle of Bacardi.
However, the same worker will have to pay at least five times his annual wage to buy a property. Is it any wonder that Londoners drown their sorrows?
I seem to recall reading that Prince Philip marks or marked particular bottles of wine that he liked or considered as stinkers.
Please do apprise us of any tips for reasonably priced wine; perhaps more tips like your Tesco vintage port, Christopher.
The floor is open for readers’ suggestions. Tomorrow’s post may be of interest to you.
I suspect that Wanda and Rob’s cellar has been stocked at a cost slightly in excess of your usual budget. Could you therefore give some guidance to those of us who hope to have the pleasure of entertaining you again in the future, exactly how much higher you would like us to raise the bar?
Rob’s modus operandi is to buy more wine than he requires when it is too young to drink. When it has matured he sells enough to pay for the purchase of more young wine. Unlike most people, he drinks wine of the highest quality and at no cost. Incidentally, if I may digress, he introduced Californian wines to the UK in the 1970s.
I consider myself lucky not to have entertained Christopher recently and so cannot consider myself to have been in his mind when commenting on the quality of wine. I shall, however, bear his comments in mind when I give him dinner in two or three weeks time.