As the Verte louches…
…a little shocked to see that it’s going on three months since I last posted here. Some recent highlights:
A week in Polruan, across the estuary from Fowey in Cornwall, with Lee-Ann and the kids. One of our favourite places - isolated, no telephone, the cobbled streets too narrow for cars, an almost untouched fishing village, one shop, two pubs, perfect.
Much time in France, including an amazing trip with my friend Marc to pick up the 76 bottles of the Pernod-1914 cache at a remote and isolated farmhouse high in the foothills of the Jura - an extraordinary and slightly eerie place at the end of a long and deserted track that seemed to go on for mile after mile. The bottles had been transferred from the cellar to red Coca-Cola crates - an indignity, I know, for such precious relics, but it made squeezing them into our hired Citroen easier. A strange feeling to be man-handling dozens of pre-ban bottles on such an industrial scale, when normally one finds them one at a time, and swaddles each one in protective tissue paper. The journey home was not without incident or excitement either, but perhaps it’s best I draw a veil over the reasons why…
Visited many small antique bourses in the Doubs and Franche Comté - very few absinthe antiques, but very now and then one gets lucky - I found a wonderful and completely unrecorded carton for Absinthe Royer Hutin, loosely modelled apparently on Privat-Livemont’s iconic Absinthe Robette girl.
Tasted some superb wines in November at the trade tastings at the Salon des Grand Vins in Paris - verticals of Chateau Gillette, Chateau Montus, Dom Perignon (including the almost unobtainable Cuvée Oenologique bottlings) and, the highlight, 5 vintages of Lafite Rothschild, with a 2003 so fabulously perfumed that it was literally breathtaking.
Back in London in December, attended the inauguration of the new Master of The Worshipful Company of Distillers - an ancient London livery company directly descended from the medieval trade guilds. A very formal dinner for 300 followed in the Company’s Great Hall. The new Master (yes, it’s all a little Masonic - there are Wardens, Sub-Wardens and a Court of Assistants) pointed out to me a plaque on the oak-panelled walls, recording that in 1363 the then master gave a dinner in this hall with 5 kings present - the kings of England, France, Scotland, Denmark and Cyprus. Now that’s something to live up to. Felt slightly out of place because I didn’t have a knighthood or an OBE (like the gentleman on my right), and wasn’t a senior diplomat (like the silver-haired Chilean ambassador on my left), or the chairman of a major whisky distiller (like David Grant of Grant’s Whisky two places away - replendent in his ancestral tartan kilt). Dinner began with toasts to the royal family and past and present Masters, champage, then white Burgundy followed by a superb Chateau Lascombes with the lamb, followed in turn by Sauternes, vintage port and finally of course the passing of the Loving Cup, accompanied by much flourishing of ceremonial daggers…don’t ask, you had to be there. Quite an evening. I’m presenting a tutored tasting on absinthe to the Distillers in March.
Lee-Ann and I celebrated the New Year with some great wines, including a very rare 1998 Schram Rosé, courtesy of my friend ”Sancho” Panzer - by some distance the best New World sparkling wine I’ve tasted, and certainly the equal of Billecart-Salmon or one of the other benchmark rosé champagnes.
Early in January left for a trip to South Africa to visit my parents - the first time I’ve been back in nearly two years. Glorious weather, and the wonderful bright African light, so different from the hazy sunshine of Northern Europe. Sat and worked in my apartment on the beachfront overlooking miles of sand, palm trees and endless blue sky.
…and yesterday, in Paris, I bought for my Finest & Rarest site arguably the most important bottle of cognac in private hands…from the cellars of a legendary Parisian restaurant that closed in the 1950’s, in magnum, a wonderful 200 year old squat black-glass crudely handblown bottle, a large glass seal on the neck showing the unmistakeable image of a shooting star, and an ancient yellowed manuscript label “Vieux Cognac, 1811″. The year of Halley’s comet, the greatest vintage in Western Europe of the 19th century, some say the greatest vintage ever.
Myron said,
September 16, 2007 @ 11:23 pm
interesting
The Standard Deviant said,
October 15, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
The Grace-cup and Loving-cup appear to be synonymous terms for a beverage, the drinking of which has been from time immemorial a great feature at the corporation dinners in London and other large towns, as also at the feasts of the various trade companies and the Inns of Court,—the mixture of which is a compound of wine and spices, formerly called “Sack,” and is handed round the table, before the removal of the cloth, in large silver cups, from which no one is allowed to drink before the guest on either side of him has stood up ; the person who drinks then rises and bows to his neighbours. This custom is said to have originated in the precaution to keep the right or dagger hand employed, as it was a frequent practice with the Danes to stab their companions in the back at the time they were drinking. The most notable instance of this was the treachery employed by Elfrida, who stabbed King Edward the Martyr at Corfe Castle whilst thus engaged. At the Temple the custom of the Loving-cup is strictly observed. The guests are only supposed to take one draught from it as it passes ; but, in No. 110 of the ‘Quarterly Review,’ a writer says, “Yet it be chanced, not long since at the Temple, that, though the number present fell short of seventy, thirty-six quarts of the liquor were consumed.”
– Cups and Their Customs, 1855.
The Standard Deviant said,
October 15, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
Correction to my previous comment: The date of the book should have been 1863.