Thought experiment: Touring an English vineyard

I've tried to be good this week, I really have.  Sober-sided comments.  Touristic pictures of great Italian locales.  No foul-mouthed drunken rants.  Bonhomie and good will toward all.  No silly business. 

Christ, it's killing me.

Forget my consuming jealousy of bloggers who get invited to write in serious wine journals for money (imagine! it happens!).  Forget, like totally forget, writing a book about the nectar of Bacchus.  So, to quote the great American poet, "Let's go crazy / Let's go nuts!"

To set the scene: I was reading my favourite British wine writer -- no, my favourite wine writer, no qualifications -- and I read a few of her back posts about English wineries.  Well, also a couple of Welsh ones, but the Welsh lost their independence about eight centuries ago, so I'll classify them as English.

Since I've been tramping around a lot of Italian vineyards lately, I tried to imagine doing the same in England.  Not only did I wonder what the wines would taste like, I wondered how truly English the experience would be.  As an illustrative contrast, let us think back to all those golden days in Italy, where the tour of the vineyard, the cantina and the tasting were followed by a 9-course lunch with a different wine per course.  The good-natured chatting about everything under the sun, about history and family, about politics and culture, about life and its moments of ecstatic epiphany mixed with loss, regret and a desire for antidepressants (they must read Cevola too).  Think of the sunny afternoons spent on the terrace, refreshed by mountain zephyrs.  Like here:

At Osteria Reale,
Tramonti,
Costiera Amalfitana

Now think of a Sunday afternoon in Kent...

"Oh to be in England!"  And here we are.  My ancestral home, where one of my passports comes from.  Where my smarter Irish and Scottish ancestors ran to escape the long arm of the law and the crooked claw of destitution.  The land of the two greatest men of letters, Charles Dickens and Ray Davies.

I am standing on a windy hillside, observing with compassion the straggling vines as they are whipped into a frenzy by the chill gale, which at least has the effect of drying the top crust of mud between the rows.  The sun peeps betimes -- they say that over there, you know -- from amongst the scudding clouds.  My feet are heavy with soil and compost.  They practice a green sustainable biodynamic multigrain highfibre agriculture here, I note approvingly.  You don't need robust bursting with fruit vines to make fine wine, after all.  Though I do wonder how I'll clean the cow dung off my Ferragamo loafers.

My tour guide and co-owner of Domaine Evans Patagonia, Marigold Chillington-Evans, smiles with a girlish enthusiasm, her blonde hair streaming into her creased face, clutching herself although it is mid-July and she is dressed is a very large fuzzy jumper -- that's what they call a "sweater" over there, you know.  Her smile makes her look like Camilla, but with bigger teeth.  She of course is wearing wellies.

"Aren't we having splendid weather!" she screams, trying to be heard over the wind.  "It's almost up to 16 degrees!"  That's about 60-61 Fahrenheit.  "This is the finest day we've had in three weeks!"

"You must have frightful problems with ripening!" I bellow back.

"Oh, gosh, yes!  Frightful!  We must chaptalise every year!  Sometimes twice if it's really glum!"

She laughs, tossing back her head and showing me her fillings.  Lots of them.  Too many toffees.  That's what they call "candy" over there.

"I understand all your vines are hybrids!"

"Most of them are!  We adore Seyval Blanc! But we have had some success with Chardonnay!  See, this one here!"  It is the sickliest little vine I have ever seen.  It looks like it needs a nice cup of tea. 

"When do you harvest?"

"We try to hold on till Christmas!  Takes a long time to ripen here!   But in hot years we're forced to pick by Michaelmas!" I have no idea when Michaelmas is.  (Pronounced Mickle-muss.  And we're supposed to speak the same language.)  "Why," she exclaimed, "last year the temperature rose to 25 (77F) for two days straight!  And we had a drought -- lasted a whole week!"

Marigold presses on. "Well, it's cold in Champagne too!  And we happen to have the same geological structure, same chalky soils, as Champagne, as well!  The white cliffs of Dover and all that!"

I groan inwardly.  I knew that was coming.  "So I guess you emphasise the sparkling wine?"

"Oh rather! It's awful to brag, as you'd say, but we've won Honourable Mention in the Greater Maidstone Sommeliers' Association 'Donum Bacchi' competition the last two years in a row!"  She pronounces it back eye.

"That's great! In what category?"

She beams with justifiable pride.  "Most Attractive Synthetic Cork!   Our logo is on it!"

The logo is a line drawing of a rather querulous-looking Patagonian penguin.

I dislike cute animal logos, which bode ill for the stuff in the bottle.  I hasten to change the subject.  "How do you combat mold and mildew?  This is such a cool, damp climate!"

She hunkers down to inspect a vine's meagre leaves.  I notice some black spots on them.  "Tea leaves!  Cow's horns!  Cat's pee at the new moon!  And that's all!  We're certified biodynamic, you see!" Other leaves are looking a bit bluish-grey, are starting to shrivel.  Marigold gives these leaves a brave little smile.  "Right!  Well!  We'd better go in before a spot of rain drops by!"  She indicates a swelling mass of purple-black clouds that is racing in from the southwest.  We scamper to the house-cum-cantina and tasting room just as the storm breaks, a frenzied mess of rain, hail and prawns that had been lifted from the maddened waters of the Channel.

Marigold squints outside and says gamely, in the spirit of those who used to say  Cor, luv, there's been a war on y'know,  "Our wines go a treat with prawns." 

I'm glad to be indoors, where we don't have to scream to be heard.  In fact, Marigold's voice falls to such a hushed susurration that I can scarcely hear her.  "Would you like to taste now?"

"Yes," I whisper.  "Lead the way."  I wonder why we're whispering.  And why the cheerful, chatty woman of the vineyard has become the timid -- shall I say frightened? -- little wren of the house. 

Marigold leads me to a small, chilly, chintzy room endowed with a sort of Nottingham-modern oak table and chairs set.  I see a framed photo of her husband, a scowling Argentine of Italian and Welsh background, descendant of sheep-butchers and wine-makers in Patagonia.  Many of them were prominent in the Argentine military during the 1970s, which was when Mr. Bugiardi-Evans migrated to the UK.  A typical second career in wine soon followed. 

Swiftly and silently, Marigold prepares for the degustation. 

Finally, all is ready.  Four bottles are set before me, four glasses, a spit bucket, and a little plate of digestive biscuits.  The wines are all white, three sparkling.  They are nearly devoid of colour.  The three sparklers (Charmat method) are distinguishable from the still wine only by the presence of a few dispirited bubbles that keep bumping into the side of the bottles, as if unaccepting of their recent imprisonment.  I pour from the first bottle, labelled Extra Brut Extraordinaire Special Cuvee "Heathcliff."  Stated alcohol is 11%.  The wine gives off a stink of sulphur, which however blows off and leaves behind a treacly odour that reminds me also, a little, of the banana smell you get in certain cheap brands of latex paint.  "Hm.  Hm.  Interesting nose.  Yummy."  I swirl, swirl and swirl again, postponing the dreadful inevitable.  I am thinking of desserts, though.

"Do you really think so?"  Marigold murmurs, hopefully, a bassa voce.  "We've worked so hard on our organoleptics.  You must remember, our vines are very young.  Give them time, I beg of you." 

I gird my gustatory loins.  There is something so imploring and vulnerable, perhaps a bit desperate, in her tone.  I must be brave.  Buck up.  Spirit of Dunkirk and all thet.  I raise the glass to my lips, I tilt it just a bit, just enough to allow some of the liquid to touch my tongue. 

Much to my astonishment, it nearly tastes like wine.  In fact, it does taste like wine, the kind of wine from lesser appellations in France or the Finger Lakes circa 1965 or 1970.  Thin, so acidic it strips the enamel off your teeth.  No length, pallid soupcon of fruit, itself begging for a nice digestive biscuit to take the edge off.  I stuff five of them, the biscuits of course, into my mouth at once.  I spray crumbs all over the place as I explain to the plainly anxious Marigold, "Excellent with food, with all food, just like Champagne!  Kudos to you, who have made such lovely wine in such harsh conditions!"

Laughing with relief, Marigold tells me, "Oh it's not so bad, really.  I for one say good-o global warming. It was much harder to get good quality fruit ten years ago.  In fact, my husband, Guillermo" -- pronounced Ghee-sher-mo in the Argentine manner -- "is in the Shetlands now.  He says they remind him of Las Malvinas."  She looks about and lowers her voice.  "The Falklands, in truth.  He's buying some land there for a vineyard to be planted within eight or ten years.  The monks made wine there in the eighth century, after all.  Until the Norsemen barged in and wrecked everything.  And we're restoring a lost part of our heritage.  We're backing Britain, in a wine sense."

"And, dear lady, I'm sure Britain is frightfully grateful."

She is doing something that startles me.  I feel myself falling.  I'm dizzy with a cherished image of the past.  For Marigold is looking eagerly, earnestly, longingly at me and says, "Gosh!  Do you really think so?"

At this moment she is the image of Joyce Grenfell, the wonderful, adorable, lovely and talented Joyce Grenfell.   I fear I'm rather losing my grip. "You say Gheeshermo is in Scotland?"  My voice trembles.

Silently, with gleaming eyes and a becoming blush on her wind-burnt face, Marigold pours two glasses of her best, Extra Extra Brut Grande Cuvee "Lovelace."  She hands one glass to me.  She holds up her glass.  Her hand betrays the slightest of tremors.  Her teeth gleam in the sudden ray of sunlight that shines through the leaded glass window.  Our flutes clink.

We wrap forearms and drink from each other's glass.  She whispers, "I do hope you write us up on your blague thingie."  She sounds just like Joyce in "The Pure Hell of St. Trinians."

I imagine myself as her Sammy.  I am intoxicated.

"Blog, darling.  It's called a blog."

 

Comments

[Stephen Skelton]

Is this meant to be funny? You seem to know NOTHING about English wine. Please - before you try humour again - get your facts right.

[alex]

I found it funny !!!
Thanks Terry.

[TH]

@ Stephen - some people didn't find Benny Hill funny either. I found him brilliant. And, no, I don't know a thing about English wines except what I've read in the papers and between the lines, so of course you're right. On the other hand, what do straight facts and an (allegedly) humorous "Thought Experiment" have to do with each other?

@ Alex - Thanks and me too! Especially the bit about the prawns. And the Greater Maidstone Sommeliers' award. Genius, really, or something close.

[justine]

Terrence, Tezzer, Tez, Terrarnce, SIR.
Gosh, what cheeky chaps you are, over there in the old colonies! One larffed orff one's hack, don't you know. Hoping you don't mind awfully, but just to set you straight, (should you ever meet the Queen and it crops up in chit-chat - you know how these things do),one must never say Greater Maidstone, but only Maidstone Magna, and whilst we DO call a spade a spade (or a shovel), a prawn on this side of the cocktail is called a shrimp.
All the prawns are in America.

[TH]

Justine, I see the famed English sense of humour (I still miss Punch) is alive in you. Brava.

First, I never imagined there was a Greater or a Magna Maidstone. My old auntie, long defunct, used to live there.

Second, I first encountered the word prawn (many decades ago) in an English publication! I feel let down and deluded. Divided as I am by my family history (we used to read ILN and Rupert Books at Christmas, and we ate ourselves sick with MacIntonish toffees) and my American upbringing, I feel the urge to sue somebody. And, as a famous Englishman recently reminded me, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about; a topping instance of stating the obvious, wot.

Put in a good word with HRH for me, would you? She's a pretty nice girl, though she hasn't got a lot to say.

[TH]

Wait! Aren't you the famous Justine of the province of Grosseto?!

[justine]

I blush. One's fame goes before one. Yes, verily 'tis I. Oh dear, we have a lot to learn, don't we? I'm afraid it's apocalypse now in Blighty...MacIntosh toffees have been bought out by Yin Tow Toothrot Inc (probably), and all the prawns, shrimps, krill, single cell amoebas (that weren't in the pub) slouching around the English channel have either passed into the annals (careful) of oceanic histoire, or they glow in the dark. Maidstone, for sure, has neither a Greater, Lesser, Magna or anything else and is now one large Tesco with a gastropub. I think they sell shrimps.
Oh, and Queenie has oodles to say...she's simply struggling with an old MacIntosh toffee your old auntie gave her.

[TH]

I'm having a right old nostalgia rave-up in my dodgy old ticker. The next time I'm at the Bastiani in your provincial capital, we must meet for LASHINGS

of tea and oodles of cakes. Haw haw, by Jove and pip-pip.

Carry on.

[Ronald]

T,
i am 'LOST'..what's the purpose of this post? i understand nothing...

and you forgot James Joyce...

[TH]

Ronald, the point is, Justine got it. Consider it an hommage to a by-gone England, the one of the Ealing comedies. You are too young.

Joyce was a Harp, a Mick, a Paddy, a Bogtrotter, an Oirishman. Like most of my relatives. Doesn't qualify as an English writer, quite. BTW, you didn't question my choice of Ray Davies...

[justine]

oh go then, (stifled yawn), WHY Ray Davies?

[TH]

Well, if you're going to be that way, never mind. Cheeky monkey.

[Ronald]

T,
normally i don't question of one's music preferences...the same goes to you...

ray davies= the kinks?
he's maybe your cup of tea but might be a poison to others...:)

i like j.k rowling the best..Hurray for Harry Potter!!!!
and i left shakespeare long time ago *sigh*