The Comet in the Glass Wine & Spirits Diary
Giles MacDonogh
London,20 august ,2025
Not much happens in July. Tastings peter out as the trade scoops up its children and heads off to Tuscany or the Dordogne for the summer. Since Brexit it might be holidays in Cornwall, Margate or indeed Skegness, but whatever the case there is little going on in London. Here it was hot, at least until St Swithin’s Day when it rained, and in keeping with the old saw, the weather has gone grumpy and it has rained a little bit every day, ever since.
There was, however, a rum tasting (or rather ‘a tasting of rum’) organised by The Whisky Exchange. I have jaundiced views about rum: I am not so keen on molasses-based spirits and prefer rums made from distilled sugar-cane juice. That mostly means rums from former French or Spanish colonies, as the old British islands were keener on using the coarser molasses. My
prejudice dates back to the time when French restaurants used to try to fox me by bringing some ancient cask-aged rum in lieu of cognac at the end of a meal, and in many instances what they delivered was as elegant and subtle as a rare old cognac, but not always at such a staggering price.
As it was, the tasting included a great many rums actually made in Britain, presumably from imported molasses or simply British sugar. These could be dressed up with different forms of cask-ageing and the application of spices to provide a palette for the cocktail trade. They were not for me. I consoled myself with a few French and Spanish colonial rums instead. The most
popular in France is St James from Martinique, which makes rum from its own cane plantations. The basic white is a good bet.
I like a Ti’ punch when its hot (‘two fingers of white rum topped up with equal measures of sugar syrup and fresh lime juice’ – as my late bartender friend Vincent would say), but the white rum has to taste of rum. It is no good pouring a rubbishy rum like Bacardi. You might as well use vodka! Of course, the buttery VSOP is better, but better for drinking on its own. The same table was showing Depaz, which is more of a boutique distillery and had a fine, buttery six-year- old VSOP and an elegant eight-year-old Hors d’Age.
Paranubes came from Mexico and called itself ‘aguardente de caña’ or cane-spirit. It is made from different varieties of sugar cane. The four-cane spirit appealed to me most: it was a very nice rum indeed and softer than some. Panama Pacific was another fine rum, particularly in its nine, fifteen and twenty-three-year-old incarnations. The floral, buttery nine-year-old is pretty
good all round, and the others, although obviously better, are pretty expensive.
Dos Maderas is actually bottled in Spain. Caribbean rums are shipped to Jerez and aged in casks by sherry- makers Williams and Humbert. The best is 5 + 5 aged in both palo cortado and Pedro Ximenez casks. Elsewhere I had an interesting 10-year-old Papalin rum from Réunion with a slightly medicinal character and SBS Antillaise 2020, a Martiniquais rum distilled from molasses, aged in a port cask and bottled at cask strength. It was very rum baba, lots of caramel, lots of salt, and cost lots and lots of money.
Château La Coste is nearer home. It is a 200-hectare wine estate featuring a luxury hotel and a handful of restaurants owned by Irish businessman Paddy McKillen.
It is situated north of Aix-en-Provence on the way to the Lubéron. They held a jolly party on the roof of the Ham Yard Hotel in Soho, a space tucked away between Great Windmill Street and Denman Street and featuring a gnarled old olive tree, lavender, tomatoes, courgettes, runner beans, herbs and hives.
The sappy estate rosé flowed but there was also a chance to taste the chunky white and a good Cabernet-Syrah-Grenache red as well as zingingly fresh oysters, pissaladière, tarte tropézienne and other goodies.
Normally reserved for hotel guests, this month the garden is open to anyone upon paying £15.75. They will welcome you with an inclusive rosé sorbet.
You may book here: Tonic Checkout
I had been to the roof garden before, but quite new to me was going to the Hutong restaurant on the 33 rd floor of the Shard.
I went to see my old friends from Schloss Johannisberg in the Rheingau. It was hot outside, and the Chinese food was even hotter. It was also an opportunity to meet the director Stefan Doktor, who took over from Christian Witte nine years ago. Witte replaced the legendary Wolfgang Schleicher who once sent me a bottle of Eiswein in recognition of a translation of some lines written by Goethe in Wiesbaden on wine from the celebrated Comet Year of 1811:
Setze mir nicht, du Grobian,
Mir den Krug so derb vor die Nase!
Wer mir Wein bringt, sehe mich freundlich an,
Sonst trübt sich der Eilfer im Glase.
Which I rendered thus:
Don’t slam the thing down, you thug:
Can’t you perform any act with class?
He must come in friendship who brings the jug,
Or he’ll spoil the comet in the glass.
Schloss Johannisberg was for a century and more, the most famous wine estate in Germany. It was both the first all-Riesling estate and the place where the first ‘nobly’ sweet wines were made in 1775. The first ever Eiswein is also believed to have been made there in 1858. Until it was swiped by Napoleon, it was the property of the Abbot of Fulda. It passed to Prince
Metternich after 1815 and became part of the portfolio of the baking-powder prince Dr Oetker in 1974.
The party was to launch the new Rheingau wine ‘Prince Metternich’ but there was a chance to try some lovely examples from the estate range, including a fabulous 1976 Auslese. I could see no comet in my glass, but it was from one of the top ten vintages of the last century and pretty special for all that.
Ends
