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Anyway, the rain pissing down, a dreadful pint of beer: I opened the wine list for something to do. Hallelujah: the heavens shone forth. It was offering 1945 Lafite and Latour for seven pounds ten shillings each. In those days, £15 was a lot of money for an undergraduate, but even then, it was an unmissable opportunity. An oenophile friend and I treated ourselves to a bottle of each. They were magnificent. Pile on the superlatives past the point of absurdity and you have still not reached the start line. It was like a mystic fusion with mountainous grandeur while listening to the Messiah as an aperitif, followed by the B Minor. I wish that I had made a full note. I might have been more solicitous of posterity, had I known that this was probably the greatest evening’s drinking I would ever experience.
A couple of weeks later, we were back for more. Disaster. ‘Sorry, sir, but the hotel owners have taken those two off the list, to drink themselves.’ I wondered whether they might have been alerted by the reverential, introibo ad altare dei, manner in which I approached the sommelier on the first occasion. I only hope that they did not give any to the architect.
It has often been asserted that the house of Latour is incapable of producing a poor wine. That has been my experience, though a couple of bottles of the ’70, drunk around 1990, did not live up to their reputation. But ten years or so ago I had another Cambridge Latour experience which proved that the Château can thrive in bad years. I was speaking to the University Wine Society, and the evening was sponsored by Latour. Their representative seemed ill at ease. I wonder what lures the undergraduates’ honeyed tongues had deployed to entice him. He may have been expecting Regius Professors and Heads of Houses, or at least the dons in charge of college wine purchases. Instead, he had a roomful of thirsty youngsters, and me.
The wiles had only been partially successful. There was no chance to see how the ’45 had developed, nor to compare it with the ’61, nor to look in on the adolescent ’82s. I was not even able to revise my opinion of the 1970. There were a couple of lesser years — again, oh for a note, however red-rim stained. We were also treated to a fair amount of Forts de Latour, including the ’75. Throughout clubland, it had been drunk far too soon, in the early Eighties, when it was still hard and green. Indeed, the bottles we tried could have done with more softening, but the fruit was there.
The highlights were unexpected. 1971 was not a great year. One might have thought that there was a risk of its being in sere and yellow leaf. On the contrary: it was still too young. Though all the elements were present, it was not ready to spring into wakefulness. 1973 was an awful year. Yet the Latour, en magnum, was a thoroughly decent drop of claret. Even then, it would have been a rarity, because no one had thought it worth keeping. If any still exists, it has probably expired by now, and I would not be surprised if the ’71 had come and then gone. But there is a moral. Latour can be trusted, even in the years which were not composed by Handel or Bach.
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