Drink

I fancy myself as a bit of an oenophile and during the lockdowns, when my local branch of Majestic was forced to close, I joined The Wine Society and started buying wine from a variety of online sellers such as Vivino and Goedhuis & Co. The upshot is that I get three or four emails a day from these companies and have become an expert in deconstructing their sales patter. The common theme is to coddle the self–deception of the buyers that they aren’t full-blown alcoholics – heaven forfend! – but are obsessed with wine for some other, entirely respectable reason. For instance, Goedhuis is currently promoting a ‘platinum selection

I was reminded of the worst liquid that I have ever consumed. It was the last occasion on which I drank Coca-Cola, nearly 50 years ago. To be fair to Coke, this bottle was at room temperature, and the room was in the Anatolian peninsula, during the ferocity of high summer. A group of us were travelling in a battered old bus, still four hours by bad roads from Izmir, hot water and cold beer. Having run out of bottled water, we needed something to stave off dehydration. The village offered a choice: well water or parboiled Coke. An aristocratic French leftie was moved to a declamation: ‘Moi, j’ai un

Amid the grandeur of old Edinburgh, in the lee of the castle, is one of the finest buildings in Scotland: George Heriot’s School. But Heriot’s is more than an architectural gem. It is an epitome of Scotland as it used to be, before the Scottish esprit de corps succumbed to kailyard grievance-mongering under the rule of Sturgeon the tricoteuse and her Nationalist administration. George Heriot, ‘Jingling Geordie’ as he was nicknamed after the coins supposedly jingling in his pockets, was one of many Scotsmen who went south to make their fortune after the Union of the Crowns in 1603. ‘The noblest prospect a Scotsman ever sees is the high road…

The Irish rarely understate their achievements. Yet there is one exception. Over the centuries, the links between Catholic Ireland and the Bordeaux wine trade have been fruitful. O’Brien (Pepys’s Ho Bryan, now Haut Brion), Lynch, Barton and many other names: these are enduring memorials to a fruitful relationship. But the best-known Hibernian exiles were warriors. From the 16th century onwards, Irish soldiers served with distinction in continental armies. Their numbers increased after the Battle of the Boyne. London wanted to break the power of Gaelic, Catholic Ireland for all time, and one way of doing so was to expropriate the native landowners. Many of them decided to repair their fortunes

If only toasts and good wishes were weapons of war. At every serious repast I have attended since the invasion began, someone has raised a glass to the heroes – and heroines – of Ukraine. The rest of us have responded with a blend of solemnity and moist-eyed emotion. One’s emotions are strange. I can read about the deaths of warriors on the battlefield, now riding with the Valkyries on their way to Valhalla, and merely respond with a dry-eyed salutation. But hearing of some old girl who had been living in hunger and squalor and terror in a cellar for days and indeed weeks, with the regular crump of

The inhabitants of Tuscany and Umbria can claim to be the most civilised beings on the planet, even exceeding the Afrikaners and the Ulster Prods. In the farms, villages and hill towns, there is an easy understanding of life’s pleasures, naturally including food and drink. One might describe it as prelapsarian, except that Adam and Eve did not drink wine – which surely justifies the Fall. Well done, that serpent. It is easy to imagine the course of events on a typical morning in a typical village. Lorenzo has decided to visit the dottore. His wife has been nagging him about his liver, insisting he cuts back on grappa. What

Across oceans and continents, less favoured nations produce more history than they can consume. In these islands, the English — as opposed to the Scots and the Irish — merely consume a lot of well-written military history. The other evening, stimulated by a few decent bottles, someone raised a hoary question. If we could have been born in an earlier century — pre-20th — which would we have chosen? What epoch was worthy to compare with the Antonines and those Good Emperors, as praised by Gibbon? The consensus was that, assuming a strong constitution and plenty of money, the long 19th century in Britain, from the end of the Napoleonic

The larger islands of the Mediterranean all have their glories. Fought over for millennia, they now seem to have attained stability as part of the post-1945 political order, but the records of the long epochs of conflict are among the most fascinating aspects of European history. The successive waves of conquest have left material to delight archaeologists and aesthetes. Although western Sicily stands above them all, the intricacies of Sardinia’s history and culture can enthral the scholar, and the visitor. Prehistoric inhabitants left interesting traces as did Phoenicians, who were succeeded by Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals and Byzantium. Then, for more than four centuries, Sardinia was part of the Kingdom of

Thirteen years ago we shared an office building with a large international bank. A common lift connected both businesses to the underground car park. Here I once overheard one of the bank employees describing our offices: ‘And you know what else they have up there…’ He spoke in the kind of wide-eyed, aghast tone you might have expected if he were about to reveal an opium den or a branch of Stringfellows: ‘They’ve got a bar.’ This was true. In the evenings after work, while the bankers downstairs were soberly hard at work destroying the world economy, there were people only yards above them shamelessly chatting over a beer. If

There was only one flaw in my Christmas this year. I did not spend enough of it with Santa Claus-age children. It is of course easier to delight in the charm if one does not live with the brats all year round. However adorable they may be, there are moments when they are also living instances of the doctrine of Original Sin. Moreover, in a Father Christmas household, it is helpful to have a bedroom some way from the parents. Admonitions will have been issued. The little ones will have been prohibited from invading the parents’ room until, say, 8 a.m. But admonitions do not automatically command obedience. Misrule is

‘Earth has not anything to show more fair.’ One can admire the view from Westminster Bridge and feel near the epicentre of a great civilisation, but still believe that Wordsworth was exaggerating. His line came to mind when I was thinking about Christmases past, two of which I was fortunate enough to spend in the Cape. That scenery really is hard to rival. In the 1980s, the Cape offered five of life’s greatest pleasures. Landscape, politics, shooting, wine — and about 120 miles from Cape Town, there is an enchanting village called Arniston, or Waenhuiskrans, not far from Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa. Its inhabitants are Cape Coloured

Rich men often look out for bargains. I suppose that is why they are rich. But there can be problems. Occasionally bargains fail to live up to their name. It would not be easy to find a single bottle of le Montrachet for £600, yet a friend of mine once bought a whole case for that sum. He forgot the wise old adage: ‘If something sounds too good to be true, it is probably neither.’ Not one of his 12 bottles turned out to be drinkable. On a lesser scale, my friend Geoffrey fell victim to Waitrose. He and Louise invited me to lunch and the pièce de résistance was