So
our pals with the fabulously chi-chi place in the South of France
turn up at our house in London, waving a bottle of what looks like
champagne: right shape, quality label, tinselly foil on the top.
Yes,
the name, Pol Rémy,
apparently rich in comic deceptions, arouses a bit of a laugh, but
that's the French for you.
'How
much?' they say. 'How much do you think it cost?'
I scuffle
around offering prices starting at €15.00, because I haven't had a
chance to get a proper look it; but I also understand that this is
some kind of Dutch auction towards an unfeasibly low figure, gasps of
astonishment, all-round disbelief. What I don't know is that the unfeasibly low
figure is actually €1.99 or possibly €2.99 - there's a moment of
crisis here, before we settle for €1.99 - at which point I have to
assume that the wine itself is actually in negative price territory,
given that the bottling packaging and distribution must have cost
€1.99 and surely more. Which makes it, in all probability, the
cheapest grog I have drunk this century.
'Scary,'
I say, and what we explicitly don't do is show any interest in
drinking the stuff there and then.
Which
means that it disappears into the Death Row which is my wine rack,
only resurfacing when some other people are round, people who like a
laugh. Out the stuff comes again and what do you know - it's just a vin
mousseux after all? Not only that but it has a plastic bung instead
of a cork, which is depressing. And
it's only 11%
alcohol.
But there's no turning back and I serve it up superchilled, as cold
as Murmansk, and await results.
Mixed:
three out of four of us find the stuff undrinkable - so much so that
we actually have to tip it away. It tastes like nasal decongestant.
The fourth person in the party, on the other hand, savours the
bouquet, holds his glass up to the light, smacks his lips with little
pattering sounds.
'Maybe
it's the drugs I'm having to take at the moment,' he says, 'but I
quite like this. Very pleasant.'
The
rest of us shout at him, drugs or no drugs: it's not possible to
enjoy Pol Rémy,
not even in these terrible times. We make entreating gestures involving
our arms and
hands,
but he carries on quite equably. We give up. He finishes his glass
and wonders if there's more. There you go.
Which
would have been it for Pol Rémy, except for the fact that I later
go to the trouble of looking it up to see if there's any mention of
it, anywhere. A nagging desire for reassurance makes me do it: I want
any references I come across, to be abusive or derogatory; I want to
believe wholeheartedly that this was one of the worst - certainly
one of the cheapest - wines I have ever drunk; I also want to be
told, implicitly, that it was okay to throw away half a glass of the
stuff, something which even in the face of the worst wines, seems
somehow immoral.
But
no: this place adores it, calling it 'A lovely, clean, zesty wine'
and much more, as well as suggesting that you might want to pay $8.99
(New Zealand) a bottle. The next site along is less sanguine, but
still manages a 'Good dryness' followed by 'Easy and sweet', which
makes me wonder; but even the one after that manages a cautious
thumbs-up - although the bottle illustration seems to have changed,
plus the price, so perhaps Pol Rémy is more chimerical than I at
first thought - a Keyser Söze kind of wine, a wine which means as
much or as little as the drinker wants it to and looks different each
time. Also the quoted price now ranges from £1.23, which sounds
right, to £5 excluding tax, which sounds limitlessly wrong.
So:
we end up with a variously-tasting, variously-labelled,
variously-priced wine, known generically as Pol Rémy - but appearing
all over the place in different styles and at different levels of
drinkability, encountered by numerous baffled drinkers, none of whose
stories tally. Which, now I think about it, is what wine is, anyway.
So I suppose it all works out. And €1.99! You'd have to be mad both to do it and not to.
CJ
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.