Part 5

The undying snob in man reveals himself as much in the choice of the wines he drinks as in the clothes he wears or the conversation he affects. Waves of fashion that depend on the praise or blame of someone in authority—a king, a beau, a singer, a sportsman, a politician or an actor—sweep in a wine and sweep it out again. Some have their brief spell and are no more seen; others return at almost fixed intervals like solar eclipses. Port we owe to anti-French bias and a long-forgotten political treaty concluded in the heat of this same rancour; but heavily reinforced Port will be with us till the threat of Prohibition assumes proportions menacing enough to make us confine ourselves to natural wines as the most logical defence against the misrepresentations of the teetotalers. Sherry, on the other hand, has been coming in and going out ever since its name was Sack. Madeira’s eclipse has a more rational explanation, for the quality of that wine has never recovered from the scourge of the Oidium, which all but exterminated its vineyards in the Fifties. The fate of Madeira was the ordinary fate of things that are out of sight. The vines of the island were not in normal bearing again till some decades afterwards, when the old John Company, the largest buyer of Madeira wines, had already ceased to exist. Claret and Burgundy, long eschewed as French growths and penalised by prohibitive duties to the profit of an ever more alcoholic Port, blossomed for us anew when Gladstone accomplished the revolutionary step of lowering the duties on light wines to a shilling the gallon in 1861. Hermitage has disappeared in England, as Arbois has in France. Hock and Moselle were patriotically, even, considering the absence of supply, a little ostentatiously, renounced during the War as Hunnish and unhallowed things—so much so, indeed, that our greatest living authority on wines passed them over in silence in a book, which is a classic, written during that period of passionate professorial denunciation of everything German. Yet long before Locarno they had returned in triumph to their old popularity in the Houses of Parliament, as advertising circulars were careful to inform us. Greek wines, like Byron’s verse, have had their day. Tokay, now a memory and almost no more made, was hallowed by the prefix “Imperial” and the knowledge that it was the gift, more precious than jewelled orders or honorary colonelcies, which kings exchanged in the family circle. Italian wines have lately enjoyed a good deal of popularity among artistic persons, explicable by the charm of a Chianti flask rather than by the average quality of its contents. Marsala, now usually despised as a cheap and common wine, should be dear to us always as a memory of Nelson. It is still piously esteemed in the Navy, where Rum has long since passed out of fashion. Balkan wines may yet enjoy a vogue if Ruritanian princesses prove as good business women as they are beautiful. Algerian and Tunisian wines we know well, but more often under Europeanised titles. The Anglo-Catholic and Jewish communities make much of Palestine wines, which have little but scriptural geography in their favour. Champagne, costliest of all wines in the popular imagination, has always held its own for this very reason. Just as Sherry, decade by decade, had to be paler or darker in colour and lighter or heavier in body, so Champagne, which began by being very sweet, has now become dry as a bone. Yet “dry” Champagne only dates from the Sixties. Sweet it may yet become again, as sweet as the Russians liked it, when women become sovereign arbiters of food and drink. A decade or two ago _Carte Anglaise_ was the most expensive and fashionable degree of “liqueuring” in Champagne. To-day it is _Drapeau Américain_ (why not “Volstead Bone-Dry Monopole”?) for the Dollar is at a premium over the Sovereign. Whisky, formerly an ostler’s dram in the Scottish Highlands, was introduced by golfers, with the hearty support of the medical profession, and became popular simultaneously with that now universal game. Irish Whisky, though extensively drunk, has, for some curious reason, never been fashionable. There are few brandy-drunkards to-day. Cognac seems to enjoy most esteem in England as a medicinal restorative. Gin was rescued from Mrs Gamp’s tea-pot by the sudden popularity during the War of those American barbarisms, cocktails: a popularity largely due to their requiring elaborate paraphernalia and the fact that they were illegal in their native land. Every millionairess who could boast a Diamond Sunburst, we were given to understand, had her own portable illicit still and a marble gin-fountain in her platinum-tapped bathroom. Liqueurs, chiefly because they are sweet and many-hued, have been steadily growing in favour with ladies ever since dining out in restaurants became an integral part of our national habits.

Let no man lull himself into a sense of false security by imagining that the day is still far distant when women will rule the cellar as well as rocking Baby—and the bottle—in the cradle. A book on wine which appeared last year addressed all its advice, as though this was the most natural thing in the world, to “the good hostess,” “the mistress of the house,” who in these days “can afford to smile” at Dr Middleton’s “ungracious behaviour” in defining her sex as “Creation’s glory, but anticlimax following a wine of a century old.” Another male supremacy lies low! Man is lord of the cobwebbed bins no more; the cellar-key, even as the ballot-paper, has been snatched from him by a stronger hand.

Now women’s real taste in wine is notoriously for such as are sweet. Fielding, who knew the sex better than most, and was far from ungallant, was not the first to remark on it. In one of his now forgotten plays, as Mr André Simon reminds us, the hero, or some kindly male character, after making the same observation, sends out for a pint of “Mountain” (the luscious, honey-sweet Muscat wine now known as Malaga, but no longer obtainable in an age vowed to a cult of dry wines except in the humbler public-houses) to comfort a lady’s vapours or soothe her alarums. Of course, many men also secretly prefer sweet wines to dry. Our national wine, Port, is decidedly sweet, and could not possibly be called “dry” in the sense that Sherry often is. But Vintage Port, the feminist authority declares, “is not a woman’s taste in wine,” though it must surely be a nearer approach to it than either Vintage Claret or Vintage Burgundy. Anyhow, Port, as the classic monologue “My fust ’usbing was a Guardsman” clearly shows, is the most popular wine among women in the saloon-bars of public-houses. At present all women are exclaiming with a single voice that they execrate sweet wines and have always preferred dry, the very driest in fact, even in those dim and distant days when they were not as yet fashionable. This is only a parrot cry catching up the echo of the vogue of the moment—“Tell me what is being drunk and I will tell you that I like it best”—which need deceive nobody. It is like those terrible headaches, unknown to their grandmothers, which have induced them one and all to shear off their tresses and shave their napes. M. Daret, the distinguished _Maître de Chaix_ at Château Yquem, perhaps the greatest authority on _vins liquoreux_, knows better and is far from being dismayed. Sauternes was never dearer than it is to-day. It can only be assumed that drinking it in secret enhances its price. Mrs G. B. Stern in “Bouquet” furiously denounces Sauternes and claims that it is as monstrous to suppose that women are incapable of sharing “men’s” taste for dry wines, or Cognac, as any other hereditary “male” passion, preference, proclivity or prowess. This delightful, if unconvincing, book ends on a note of wistful nostalgia for the first properly mixed icy-cold cocktail waiting to reward her for a strenuous and rather hustled tour of _dégustation_ through the principal French viticultural districts. I very much suspect that during the course of this pilgrimage “A Deputy was King.” The real G. B. Stern was probably in spiritual residence at that “Palace” in Nice or Monte Carlo all the time. Even Mr, Mrs or Miss Chaloner owns that on this topic “we are brought up against the very objection that many women have to Claret, since they find its lack of sweetness distasteful.... Most women begin with a marked preference for wines that are frankly sweet (so do boys), or perhaps _demi-sec_, and there is a touch of austerity about Claret that makes them long frankly, or privately, to add a little sugar to the glass.” Quite so; the feminine education up to dry wines is purely a question of following the prevailing mode and a fresh manifestation of the eternal and servile imitation of man. This is indirectly confirmed by the authoress herself (I will plump for authoress and a hundred to one against author) when she adds: “Though the vine flourished long before mankind, and man is believed to have enjoyed its produce as a beverage as long ago as the neolithic period, women are only just beginning to give it their serious attention.” “The fault of their ignorance” (an ignorance which is not found in wine-growing countries) is naturally placed “partly at the door of the opposite sex, who in bygone days were only too well pleased with it.” Similar reproaches have been levelled against man for his former tyrannical exclusivity in such domains as higher mathematics, marine zoology, coal-mining, boiler-stoking, Rugby football and legislative procedure. It is doubtless theoretically arguable that “women should possess finer palates than men” and be able to detect and eliminate corked bottles when decanted—what time their husbands are presumably peeling potatoes or scolding the cook. But this is by no means the only preliminary to wining claimed for them. “Where the hostess, or even women-servants, take over the duties of cork-drawing, it is of real help to use a mechanical cork-screw.” At first blush one feels inclined to say “amen” to this, but on second thoughts it seems brutally unfair that, if men are allowed to draw corks with ordinary corkscrews (which being far simpler and more satisfactory are usually preferred by them), women should be debarred from the same male privilege. To provide women with patent corkscrews is clearly to treat them as inferiors. Sex equality is no better than a hollow mockery if such unsporting handicaps are to be allowed to remain, or the hostess’s anxious concentration in studying the grammar of “the international language” of the wine-list is to be flurried by idle male gossip.

There is a singular propriety in women arrogating to themselves the right to choose wines and lay down cellars “like men” in an age in which so many of them lack the ability to boil an egg. Yet “venturing into her cellar without a candle” the mistress of the house is told that she ought to know how to distinguish Bordeaux from Burgundy or Hock bottles by the exercise of that very tactile sense which now so often fails her in sewing on a button. “In a well-known women’s club” Miss Chaloner was recently scandalised to find that the head-waitress, when asked for some Beaune, had not “even the vaguest notion whether to look for Claret or Burgundy, or even whether the wine asked for was white or red.” This pained surprise I am not polite enough to pretend to share. “However, a discreetly dropped hint that the contour of Burgundy and Bordeaux bottles was different ... began an interest and education that doubled the value of the maid to the members of the club.”—From which it might almost be conjectured that the education in question was imparted to the members by the maid. When so many prominent judges, divines, scientists, Cabinet Ministers, university professors and thoughtful clubmen eagerly follow every passing change in the design of “Camiknicks,” it is melancholy to be told that “wines ... are seldom appreciated or used to the best advantage in women’s clubs.”

Is there a last lingering doubt in the heart of the vinously educated hostess as to the propriety of offering her guests wine—a moral, an æsthetic, not a social perplexity, of course—it is soon allayed. “In the hands of the discriminating hostess, wine has the charm, the kindly welcome of the hearth to which she invites her guests, and if possessing in careless, or stupid use, some dangers, that is not a reason for banishing HER cellar. The hostess who ... still hesitates over so grave a problem as the ethical values of wine”—previously, no doubt, learnedly and exhaustively debated at her club: perhaps the very one where the head-waitress did not know Big Tree from Wonga-Wonga—“may yet take much comfort to heart.” But where does the model hostess’s husband dine on these occasions, since he has no longer a cellar of his own, or even a key to his wife’s? There is at least one occasion mentioned on which we may be quite sure that he would contrive to find a sufficient excuse for absenting himself to “the tyrant,” or even brave “the brute’s” wrath by taking French leave—when she “might desire to give her dinner a special character, reminiscent of a particular occasion, or holiday in Italy”; in which case, “she would have no difficulty in confining the choice of her wine-list to Italian wines.” Perhaps, too, the cigars (which in spite of the practical protests of Madame Hanska and George Sand have been allowed to remain a male monopoly for far too long) would be those delicious curling Minghettis? Italian wines are often excellent in Italy, when served with Italian cooking, but the prevailing quality of “what the vintners sell” in what ladies call “those funny little continental shops in Soho” (for Italian wines are not generally obtainable elsewhere), under the fair names of Chianti, Barolo, Cortese, Orvieto, Asti Spumante, etc., is enough to make the most chicken-hearted Fabian husband rebel.

In the future wine is likely once more to be considered, even in non-viticultural countries, as a FOOD essential to physical and moral well-being, rather than as a dangerous artificial stimulant, or the sybaritic indulgence of a few eccentric old epicures. In cultured epochs wine is sure to be held in honour as an integral part of taste, while spirits are certain to reign supreme in barbarous, philistine and sanctimonious centuries, whether permitted or proscribed by the law. The present renaissance of gastronomy in England, hesitant though it still is, is of happy augury for marking the eclipse of an age likely to be identified by future social historians with the perpetual swilling of whisky-and-soda by otherwise refined and self-respecting people; and as heralding the advent of an era in which wine will be purer, better, cheaper, more abundant and varied in its kinds, besides being more justly and intelligently appreciated by the nation at large. With the increasing shortage of cereals throughout the world, the making of grain-spirits will soon become indefensible, and the same consideration may ultimately apply to beer as well.

The survival of wine and male dominance, are, as Scandinavia has shown us, parallel issues. If wine survives feminism, which, in spite of the foregoing instances of its latest manifestation, is much more likely to be œnophobe than œnophil, there will be no place left for teetotal Puritanism in a wine-loving world.

* * * * *

Bacchus, when yet a child, fared one day along an unfamiliar desert path strewn with the bleaching bones of all manner of birds and beasts that had perished there of drought. Wearied, he sat himself down to rest on a heap of stones amidst a solitary patch of verdure growing by the wayside. He found the rambling shrub, the tender leaves of which cooled and caressed his bruised and heated feet, so green and gracious that he pulled it up by the roots so as to take it home with him and plant it in his garden. Fearing lest it might wither under the scorching rays of the sun as he bore it in his hands, he picked up a bird’s skull and put the roots, with a little earth, into the hollow of the beak. The plant grew so fast while he wended his way homewards that its roots soon outgrew the prison of their narrow sheath. Thereupon he imbedded the bird’s skull in the shoulder-blade of a lion. Nevertheless the roots began once again to overspread their allotted trough, so that he had recourse to the expedient of thrusting the lion’s shoulder-blade into the jaw-bone of an ass. When, at length, he reached home and went to plant the strange wild shrub in his garden, he found it impossible to extricate the knotted roots from the three bones incasing them; so he planted it just as it was, bones and all. The vine, for such was the name he gave this goodly creeping plant, throve luxuriantly and bore the young god, who tended and pruned the holy tree lovingly, tressing its branches into a shady arbour, an abundance of heavy bloom-dusted grape-clusters, both purple and golden: the juice of which he pressed and gave to the sons of men for their sustenance and comfort in sickness and adversity and to make glad their hearts on high festivals and days of family rejoicing. And, behold, as soon as the sons of men first tasted the blood of the grape—which they straightway called wine, meaning a sacred water—a prodigy came to pass! For when they began to drink they sang as do the birds of the forest; when they drank more they became strong and courageous as lions; but when they drank yet more, they grew foolish as jackasses.

Thus it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The main reason is that predominantly cider- and beer-drinking Départements of the north and north-east have now become large consumers of wine: an appetite whetted by the much appreciated Army wine-ration, nicknamed “Pinard,” during the long years of mobilisation.

[2] _Piquette_ means sour, thin wine; it is to wine what small-beer is to ale.

[3] See note to page 17.

[4] See page 34. The Pinot was tried in Australia, but did not prove a success in such a hot and arid climate.

[5] The _Tonneau Bordelais_ has a capacity of four _Barriques_ of 22 litres each, or 900 litres in all.

[6] The coarse and common Gamay of the Côte d’Or must not be identified with the Petit Gamay, the “_plant noble_” of the Beaujolais from which all the finest wines of the latter region have always been grown.

[7] It is a significant fact that since the War the only French viticultural region that has increased its export of bottled wines is the Bordelais. This is the region in which estate-bottling is most widely adopted. Exports of Bordeaux wines in the wood have sensibly decreased.