Evelyn Waugh's Noonday Reviver

So, and not for the first time, I am seized by the conviction that if I drink one more glass of wine, I am going to die of ennui. I am haunted by something I am convinced Nicky Haslam - interior designer and legendary socialite - once said about European wines: They put something in them to make them taste funny. Maybe he did say it. Maybe he didn't. It's starting to sound plausible, even if he didn't. I am also falsely certain that he claimed that his favourite tipple was gin, and the cheaper the better. He cited (or I believe he did) White Satin as a quality choice, followed by Asda's own label. Can that be right?

At any rate, it starts to lead me down that deeply-rutted and potholed track known as Novelty Drinking. I want a drink, but I want something new, painfully new if possible. Number 2 son has worked behind bars in the West End of London, and claims to know his cocktails. He insists that without a bottle of rhubarb bitters you are nowhere as a decent Mixologist. And did you know that the secret of a good Bloody Mary - along with all the Tabasco and celery and whatnot - is to add a small measure of red wine? It's true: you get a much more elegant drink. But the rest of his recipes sound too complicated, and no fun if you have to put the ingredients together yourself. And what's the point of a cocktail drunk alone in your kitchen in the middle of the day? Context is everything. I don't really like Manhattans, but I once had a fantastic Manhattan overlooking Long Island Sound as the sun went down. That's not going to happen again.

I dig out Kingsley Amis's Everyday Drinking (also not for the first time) and hunt around for inspiration. Among other suggestions, he offers The Copenhagen (vodka, aquavit, almonds and ice); The Salty Dog (gin, grapefruit juice, salt, ice); The Dizzy Lizzy (Chambéry, framboise, cognac, Angostura, ice). They all sound terrible. I am briefly and suicidally drawn to something called a Tigne Rose: 1 tot gin, 1 tot whisky, 1 tot rum, 1 tot vodka, and 1 tot brandy. Apparently it was invented at the Tigne Barracks, Malta, by the 36th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment. All newly joined subalterns were offered this unbelievable drink as a Saturday lunchtime apéritif. According to Amis, the sometime 2nd Lieutenant T. G. Rosenthal, from whom he got the recipe, 'Put three of them down before walking unaided back to his room and falling into a reverie that lasted until Monday-morning parade.'

On the other hand, there is Evelyn Waugh's Noonday Reviver. Waugh was a cantankerous drunk, doing his novels and journalism during the day, while lit up but lucid; his Diaries in the evening, while substantially pissed; and his Letters the following morning, hungover. He was also one of the most brilliant writers of the Twentieth Century, so I'm not going to moralise; I'm just noting the fact that he drank.

Which is why his Noonday Reviver, unsurprisingly, presents a challenge. The ingredients are: 1 hefty shot of gin, half a pint of Guinness, some ginger beer. The Guinness and gin should go straight into a silver tankard, with the ginger beer to top it all up. 'I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the attribution,' cautions Amis, 'but the mixture will certainly revive you, or something.' Very well. It has just gone noon, revival time. I feel pretty okay, actually, but then I always need some reviving. In a nod to health & safety, I use about one-third the recommended quantities in a whisky tumbler. It looks harmless enough.

By half-past twelve I have taken a few apprehensive sips, and to be honest, it could be worse. There's actually a synthesis going on between the Guinness and the ginger beer, an almost Far Eastern sweet/sour thing, on the brink of refreshing, and the whole is a million miles removed from the deathly Queen Victoria's Tipple I tried a while back. Trouble is, it's not a reviver - I can feel a numbness, a lethargy, starting to creep over me, the product no doubt of that gin, the hidden assassin - or, to put it another way, it's only a reviver if you're an alcoholic. If you want something to take away the pain of the morning after and dull the edges of the rest of the day, then this will do fine. Otherwise, no. Also there's the taste. It's not bad, but it is defiantly retro, treacly and spicy and full of burps. It would be perfect in 1951, in Waugh's freezing manor house in the West Country. But now? On a bright spring day? With added central heating?

I lob the remains of the Reviver down the sink and turn to the next drink in Amis's list: Woodrow Wyatt's Instant Whiskey Collins. And then put the book down. I am not so revived that I don't know when I'm beaten.

CJ

Empty statements – what your recycled wine bottles say about you

I’ve been looking into my neighbours’ recycling boxes. I mean, not looking into them as such, not really looking per se, just sort of… glancing as I pass.

I can’t help but be interested in the empty wine bottles they contain. Ooh, I think, they’ve been drinking a lot of champagne, wonder what they’re celebrating?... That’s a bit of a low rent red…Hmm, fell for that one, did they?...Now that’s a bit nice…etc.

Wouldn't you? Don’t you? Worst of all, is someone doing it to me?

We don’t normally have to make a public declaration of our wine drinking. What we’ve drunk, and how much of it, in the past week. But the glass recycling box, sitting outside your house, does exactly that. And if like me you’re concerned about what a wine says about you as a host, it stands to reason that you’re worried about what neighbours think of the wines you’ve been drinking.

In my case, there’s quite a range. There are the occasional indulgences, that I hope someone passing recognises I had the knowledge and good taste to buy. There are the midweek supper wines, which might indicate a certain shrewd balance of quality and price. But unfortunately, there are also the appalling offers, discount fiascos and bottom-shelf bargains to which I’ve fallen prey, which I hate to think my neighbours might consider to be my wines of choice.

There’s the inevitable judgment about consumption. With a weekly collection, there is no hiding place. The neighbours don’t know that I sometimes keep empty bottles for weeks, to refer back to the labels because I’m writing about them. I do. But I have enough trouble sometimes persuading Mrs K that not all of my recycled bottles were drunk in the last seven days. So my neighbours must inevitably assume that they are looking at my weekly consumption. 

And then there are the cases, because cardboard goes in another recycling box, and there’s the flattened case for a dozen bottles of this, or half a dozen of that. Immediately, of course, passers-by are thinking aha, there’s someone who’s sufficiently into wine to buy it by the case. To consume it by the case. And Mrs K is thinking aha, I didn’t see another case arriving…

I think anyone would be suitably indignant if the council said that you had to put up a notice outside your house every Tuesday, detailing just what you had drunk that week. It would be a pretty serious posted declaration; hardly Martin Luther, but still. I’ve bought it so I’ll drink it is one thing; but I’ve bought it, drunk it, and I’m happy to tell every passer-by is quite another.

I could, I suppose, take them all to a bottle bank. Unlike a weekly collection, this has the advantage that no-one knows how long you have been hoarding up your bottles. It also has the childish attraction of hearing the bottles smash inside the bank, as you shove them in. Smash! Smash! It’s like state-sponsored vandalism.

But therein lies its fault; shoving bottle after bottle in, one by one, is a pain in the…arm. And somehow, you always stain your cuff with a little dribble of red wine from one bottle which runs out and up your wrist. 

Or I could try recycling them myself. I have seen bottles turned (or “upcycled”, as I believe they say in craft markets) into tablelights,  chandeliers,  flower vases, distinctly hazardous wall lamps , and, er, things. 

There is one simple but significant drawback to these items. They’re all horrible. Deeply, deeply horrible. I am not about to jeopardise years of acquired good taste, not to mention a happy marriage, by decorating my home with what are still clearly old bottles.

And this do-it-yourself business is all very well, until “yourself” is “me”. I am not remotely convinced that I could cut drinking glasses from a wine bottle without the need for an ambulance. Readers of a certain age will remember television ads for the legendary Ronco Bottle & Jar Cutter, a tool which in my hands could only lead to reconstructive mouth surgery. 

So you find me, out in the dark, stockinged feet, rearranging my recycling box. Trying to move the contents around quietly. (Here’s a tip: you can’t.) Pushing the bargain bottles out of sight. Turning bottles around so that the labels don’t show. 

And probably suggesting to the neighbours far more about my sanity than any empty wine bottle ever could.

PK

Transitional: Morrisons' Chardonnay

So I went to a Morrisons supermarket and bought a bottle of their own brand South African smooth and fruity Chardonnay. It cost £4.99. So what?

Only this. A couple of weeks ago, Morrisons caused a minor panic in the world of food and drink retailing by announcing a new and aggressive price-cutting strategy: so aggressive, in fact, that their profits would halve over the next few years, as the price war took effect. This in turn knocked £2 billion off the value of all listed UK supermarkets (Morrisons included), as the announcement sank in: the race for the mainstream, it now appeared, would be straight to the bottom.

Why are Morrisons putting themselves in this position? Because they've concluded that the supercheap German invaders - Lidl and Aldi, basically - have won the battle for Everyman's wallet, and that there is no longer any point in attempting the we-do-everything rationale which has driven supermarket growth over the last twenty years. Rationalised product lines, great value, stark simplicity, no tiresome coffee machines - that's the plan, apparently, and the price-wise British are going to break down Morrisons' doors in their eagerness to get at the goods. Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury will look on in horror, and, to a lesser extent, given their higher-end clientéle, Waitrose - leaving Morrisons supreme.

Thing is, do I believe them? After all, Morrisons have always been a funny kind of enterprise, not least because Ken Morrison, the man who made the chain huge in the north of England before taking them south at the turn of the century, insisted on having a dedicated pie counter in every store: a typically belligerent Yorkshire antirefinement which made me want to sneer out loud every time I read about it. Here in the south they were unknown until suddenly they were everywhere, often in absolutely huge supermarkets which they'd bought off Safeway. The old northern Morrisons was a byword for good business practice and strong growth; the new, national, Morrisons became known for a shortage of interesting product lines, a failure to invest in their IT systems, scant online presence, and a general sense of having overreached themselves. Reinvention is going to be hard.

And it matters because of the drink. Wine = supermarket wine, most of the time, for most of us. And the big supermarkets, with their ungovernably vast ranges and their insanity-provoking pricing philosophies, have used the fantasy of limitless choice as a way to flog us a load of indifferent wines at tiresomely inflated prices. But will Morrisons' bold new plan compel the others to ditch senseless variety and two-faced pricing, in favour of simplicity and clarity, just like you get in Lidl?

To say nothing of quality. When Morrisons made their news, everyone parenthetically raved about the great value of Lidl/Aldi produce. What no-one seemed to be saying was that a lot of Lidl's stuff is not just cheap, but good. Yes, they have a weakness for bin-ends of frogman's flippers/assorted fusewire/lengths of plastic sheeting; and as many have said, you can get some great stuff there but you can't do your week's shop. But their booze is always worth checking out - genuinely Continental in its one-size-fits-all approach. Can a bunch of chippy Northerners do the same?

Well, just to show solidarity, I went straight to my nearest Morrisons, pleasant enough store, fairly busy, helpful staff, Tescoesque punters milling around, slightly undecided wine section wrestling for floorspace with the discount ciders and jereboams of knock-off vodka. I got my Chardonnay (rashly adding a sub-£5 Chianti and a smarter Fitou at £5.99), took it home and drank it. It was okay, more dentist's rinse than Chardonnay, but served headache-cold, it passed the time. Thing is, Lidl would have had it on offer at £3.99, maybe even less. And since it's all about the price point, we can only conclude that Morrisons are at least 20% off the mark. All right, it's far too early to tell; a return trip in ten months' time ought to reveal a different store altogether.

If, by then, it is a different store altogether, can we hail the start of a new realism in cheap wine? Will Morrisons live up to their thrilling promise? Will they stop Tesco in their tracks? I'd like to think so; but at the same time, I have doubts as big as an Aldi dogfood multipack, that such a thing will actually happen in my lifetime.

CJ