My Christmas Wines
This Christmas was a bit like dancing on the edge of a volcano. There was an argument for getting out the last good bottles and consuming them there and then, as there is really very little out there to justify hope of a return to normality. You’d have to go back eighty years to find a similar sense of despair. Since then, there has always been an element of reconstruction, or some forces active in the world that might inspire you to go on.
Obviously,the worst prospect on the horizon is the return of Donald Trump on 20 January – the ‘Michael Myers’ of the Western World – parading (or possibly being paraded by) his team of billionaire egomaniacs, while elsewhere Putin and Netanyahu are also hell-bent on destabilising the world.
Here in Britain, we have the vacillating Starmer who appears to want to be a Blairite Atlanticist with a foot ithe US and another in Europe, except that he is locked out of Europe and Trump is unlikely to notice him in the US. Meanwhile there is little of interest on the shelves and the price of anything edible has doubled.
And across the Channel it is best not to think about the spivvy Kickl, who, as I write, looks like being the next Austrian chancellor, or other rotters like Orban, Wilders, Fico, Alice Weidel, Marine Le Pen or our own little gaggle of far-right quislings who are currently scratching out one another’s eyes in the hope of getting Trump to help them gain power in Britain.
It is enough to drive you to drink.
And so we ate, drank and made as merry as we could; trying not to think too much about the horrors the new year might bring.
That spirit kicked off on the 22 nd , when I sat down with a lawyer friend in the afternoon and drank a very old- fashioned sweet 2022 Steinberger from Kloster Eberbach with some mince pies and Lebkuchen. With just eight percent alcohol, daytime drinking didn’t feel particularly wicked. When some family turned up that evening another German wine was rolled out, a 2006 Erdener Treppchen from R Koll which was surprisingly good.
The opening of the feast was on Christmas Eve of course. We had some excellent Wine Society champagne (as ever from Alfred Gratien in Epernay) with our terrine and a 2021 Chablis-Montmains from J-M Brocard with some halibut. I am nervous of the generally dodgy 2021s, but this was pretty classical, and it tasted much more of Chablis than Chardonnay, which is essential, as far as I’m concerned. With some Camembert and aged Comté cheese there was a 1995 Château Beychevelle which was still very vigorous, but power had possibly stifled finesse, even if there was a big, full cherry aroma
emanating from the decanter.
I also decanted one of three pint-sized bottles of port I have had knocking about for some time. This one had lost its label, but the cork told me it was from Sogrape and I think it was a 2000 Sandeman. It was very powerful too, and seemingly undented by over two decades in a small bottle. Then we tripped off to two hours of midnight mass, returning at 2.00 am to bed.
We have developed our own routine when it comes to opening Christmas presents around the tree. We light a fire, a loaf of Venezuelan pan de jamon and some champagne from a distant vintage are brought out. In this case the latter was a 1995 rosé from Veuve Clicquot the colour of old brass. Like the 1995 Laurent Perrier we had on my son’s birthday earlier that month, the bead was distinctly delicate, but the wine itself was extraordinary – prunes and chocolate – really remarkable.
With more of our terrine there was 2021 Guigal Condrieu. Again, I thought the year risky, but a little more acidity didn’t go amiss, and the wine had all the attributes of good Condrieu, which is still the only Viognier worth its salt.
We always have a big forerib of heifer meat, and with that we drank a 1997 Clos des Lambrays. This was a lovely burgundy, not big, but wonderfully complex and teeming with life. Then with the Vacherin, St Félicien and stilton, we had a Banyuls Réserve from my friend Christine Campadieu of the Domaine la Tour Vieille in Collioure. Christine keeps winning prizes for her first book about travelling with the American writer Jim Harrison and it seemed right and proper to raise a glass to her.
The Banyuls went well with the Sussex pond pudding too, and I even carried a glass of it upstairs with me for our ritual devouring of Alastair Sim in A
Christmas Carol.
There were fewer star wines after Boxing Day, but friends came to lunch on the 28 th and I opened a small bottle of 1994 Fonseca port which was nicely mature, elegant but light. It went well with the surviving cheese and the tarte tatin. There were other highlights, such as a tajine in my new larger pot (a Christmas present) and a fish pie made entirely from frozen fish, as the fishermen were still on holiday.
We also had a proper ham on the bone, a present from a brother-in-law and lots of ham-and-eggs and jambon à la crème.
On New Year’s Eve we went to the cinema to watch Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment and I then rushed back to prepare our usual Italianate meal: zampone, mashed potatoes, lentils and a tomato sauce.
We generally have an Amarone with this. Having run out of old Masi single-vineyard Amarone, we found a 2018 3Cru from Guerrieri Rizzardi, which was really impressive with lashings of fruit and spice. We also had the last and best of my little bottles of port: 1994 Taylors. This had the size the Fonseca lacked.
The Feast of the Kings, or the Epiphany is the last gasp of Christmas.
The meal itself is just the prologue to the cutting of the galette des rois and the crowning of whoever finds the ‘bean’. My daughter had sadly left and we were but three, but it was a memorable galette, even if the bean has yet to be found; but there is plenty left to enjoy as we slowly turn our heads away from our plates and towards the horrors of reality.
