“Hi, Big Ed. Dog here, how are you?”
“Ah, Le Chien, yes, all good, thank you. Everything okay your end? How’s trade?”
“Fine, fine… -ish. Unwise to get me started, as ever. However, was wondering if you desired any 2022 Burgundy? Lovely wines, both colours, so much delight and pleasure, and I especially thought you might require some white, what with the small crop in 2021?”
“Indeed, had heard that it’s a cracking vintage, albeit not inexpensive, correct?”
“It would be hard for me to argue a defence for the prices. No further questions, m’lud.”
“Problem is that I just have so much wine! At current rate of consumption, there’s almost enough to see me through to the next century! So, I’m selling rather than buying. Although the market’s gone a bit flat… My stash appears to loom ever larger.”
“Understood completely, no worries. But at least your three kids are going to be drinking like deities.”
“Well, you say that, Mr R, but none of them are remotely interested. Served a treasured 1982 Pichon Comtesse over dinner the other night – utterly sumptuous – but the youngsters barely gave a cursory glance at either the bottle or the glass.”
“No! Really? You’d better invite me next time; ’82 Comtesse is epic and, as you know, I’m a man who rarely puts claret on Top of the Pops. Yet I can see that today’s youth don’t get the same connection to proper wine as did our generation who were spoiled by Grand Vin. Banking, trading, insurance, property, accountants, advertising, lawyers; they all ran fantastic cellars. When a client came in for a meeting, and perhaps a bite of lunch to follow, a decent drop to accompany said gathering was de rigeur. In the general scheme of things, it mattered not one whit. But no longer, to state the obvious.”
“I know, I know, halcyon days! I can still recall being poured a Puligny 1Er Cru when I worked at Morgan Bank Brothers, and thinking ‘I have never had a white wine like that in my life.’ I was hooked.”
“Of course, but let’s get back to your offspring; they are lucky enough to have a more than generous Dad, wanting to share his vinous love, but no dice, it would appear? Too much TikTok, far too busy following Taylor and Kelce on Instagram?”
“Something like that. The two eldest are now at university, so am hoping there might be a spark somewhere along the line… Then again, they are both having to work so hard on the academic side of things.”
“Funny you should mention further education. I was chatting to the wine steward of one of the Oxford colleges the other day; he purchased some New Zealand Chardonnay at £11 a bottle, 3 cases rather than the usual order of 6. He mentioned that the new influx of fellows was either vegan, or teetotal, or both. Meanwhile, a Cambridge college don was telling me that they were sitting on a veritable lake of claret, such is the demand for vegetarian meals that there’s never a proper occasion to drink Bordeaux. Touch of the Porterhouse Blue, first world problem, I know. But it does seem to be a bit of a shame.”
“Oh, my heart bleeds!”
“Well, steady, forget all that tabloid ‘shock, horror, probe;’ those Porterhouse cellars completely pay for themselves! The in-house quaffing is charged out to dons or students at a profit. They are, in effect, mini-wine merchants. Plus, they also stock in order to support their conference business that’s so vital to yearly turnover. Do you think that in this hard-nosed era that Bursars would support frivolous, elitist ale expenditure? Nevertheless, even such rarefied institutions’ habits are changing.”
“Okay, okay, I see that.”
“Anyway, we need to address much more important issues: when it comes to wonderful wine, the kids aren’t actually all right. Their boss won’t pour them a glass, the supermarkets steer them towards various celebrity brands, while the ‘proper’ stuff – and I’m only talking bottles around the £10–15 mark – looks very unaffordable in the current climate, and is massively accentuated when faced with a restaurant wine-list.”
“I know, dining out and drinking well at the same time appears to be virtually impossible.”
“I agree, it’s becoming more and more the preserve of the wealthy. Yet it’s hardly surprising when I recently saw NV Bollinger, Special Cuvée, listed at £180, but available at £40 on the high street. Then again, restaurants’ post-COVID overheads are substantial, to put it mildly, what else can they do in order to survive? Meanwhile, their accountants would recoil in horror at the thought of a decent stock-holding in the cellar, but that’s irrelevant anyway; why have space for bottles when it’s better to squeeze in another couple of tables? It’s bums on seats that’s vital. Can’t fault that premise. Legendary ‘cartes des vins’ have long gone: Croque en Bouche in Malvern, Bibendum in South Ken, and that incredible selection of Loire at RSJ in Coin Street, SE1.”
“Dog, if only you could hear yourself…”
“Don’t worry, I can, I know my limitations. ‘Moan, moan, moan, it was so much better in our day.’ Well, it was! Funnily enough, I’ve just returned from the Vinexpo wine exhibition in Paris, where every winegrower and négociant to whom I talked was singing from a pretty similar hymn-sheet; it’s not just this miserable rosbif. In fact, there was even more concern being discussed: the inexorable rise of low-alcohol wines, and, correspondingly, the scenario where people are simply not drinking these days; forget the 1982 Pichon Comtesse not troubling the scorers, it won’t even get picked to come out to bat! No attraction for Gen Z.”
“I’m now gagging for a large glass…”
“As am I… We should make a couple of toasts, perhaps. One to Henry Plantagenet – it was a most excellent idea to marry Eleanor of Aquitaine – and another to Bob Dylan. He saw it all coming… sort of… but he’s a genius anyway.”
