Drinking wine with the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street

Following my recent invitation for a glass of wine at 10 Downing Street…

No, let me start again.

When I was invited to drinks with the Prime Minister,…

The thing is, CJ is away – which is why you have two postings on the trot from me. And there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth when he returns; for he will discover that I have taken yet another upward step in my social status during his absence. Because this post is not about drinking wine at my dining table or in the study; no, this is about drinking wine behind (as the No 10 website puts it) “the most famous front door in the world”.

An invitation to Downing Street is understandably surrounded by security arrangements, and there are restrictions on telling people much about a visit. However, no-one has told me that I cannot talk about the wine, which is what you lot are really interested in, and of which I had high hopes.

Recent articles like this have revealed something of the quality of the government’s cellars. I thought it unlikely that they would bring out the Chateau Petrus 1978, worth more than £2,500 a bottle, for our little soirée. But perhaps the Chateau Latour 1955, with its little note, "Drink on v. special occasions”? This occasion was certainly v.special to me.

And look, the Chateau Palmer 1975 is described as a "really old-fashioned style claret, rich and excellent with some austerity"! Precisely what we have now – some austerity!! The Palmer '75 would indeed be excellent with it.

Well, needless to say, I was sorely disappointed.

There is something thrilling about arriving at Downing Street, showing your invitation to the policeman, and being guided through the gates while a gaggle of tourists look on, clearly thinking ‘Who the hell is that?” There are various security procedures whereof I cannot speak, before you are ushered through the shiny front door and into No 10 itself.

I must first draw particular attention to the glassware. We have had several tussles on the Sediment blog over appropriate drinking containers, but I can say with some confidence that No 10 surpasses even CJ in clumsy glassware. Our wine was served in clunky, green-glass goblets, more appropriate to a campfire celebration with Robin Hood’s Merrie Men.

The only possible explanation is that, along with so many other elements of such an evening, proper glassware is considered to be a security risk. These Downing Street wallahs have clearly been to a few dodgy pubs in their time; presumably, these goblets are either unbreakable, or would crumble like a car windscreen in the unlikely event of a guest attempting to “glass” the Prime Minister.

Obviously I am not privy to the catering arrangements at No 10. It is admittedly unlikely, even faced with yet another invasion of their Pillared Room by a group of strangers, that the Camerons simply popped down to the offie. But whether the wine was actually provided by No 10, or chosen by our reception organisers, I do not know.

However, in standard, drinks-party manner, your goblet is proffered with a choice of red or white wine. And here’s the thing.The white was Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc, an innocuous, fruity and citrussy New Zealand wine which you can buy in virtually any supermarket or off-licence. Indeed, at the time of writing, you can get 26% off at Tesco, something which might appeal more to No 11.

Obviously we were not attending for the wine, but a visit to No 10 is rather special, and this Sauvignon Blanc is so widely available, and so blandly drinkable, that it doesn’t register as anything special whatsoever.

The same is true of the red – Campo Viejo Rioja Crianza Reserva; again, relatively innocuous, blandly drinkable and widely available. The only thing I can really say in favour of the selection of this pair is that judiciously, one is from the Commonwealth and the other from the EU; coincidence, or politics?

So basically, a lot of things are special about a drinks evening at No 10 – but not the drinks. Perhaps they are trying to emulate the population at large by providing the kind of modestly priced, bland and unchallenging wine many people would buy for themselves. Make them feel at home. Except…we’re not at home. We’re at 10 Downing Street.

Anyway, we sipped from our health and safety approved goblets, their rims thick as china mugs. There was in fact no violence, even though security had clearly overlooked the lethal potential of a weapons-grade vol-au-vent. The PM toured the room, meeting and greeting in an accomplished manner. A few words to the gathering; a little, probably well-used joke confusing Nick Clegg with his wife as his absent “other half” (ho ho); and a crafted reference to the value of “our industry” which would clearly fit any bunch of visitors.

Presumably No 10 learnt long ago that world leaders were not averse to pocketing a reminder of their visit, and so there is absolutely nothing to, er, take home. No crested notepads, badged pencils or matchbooks. Even the gents loo air freshener and soap are, as it were, bog standard. So with no phalanx of flashbulbs to illuminate my exit, I left alone and with only my memories into the dark of Downing Street like a reshuffled Minister.

For a very modest outlay, you can experience the whole thing for yourself. First, down to your local retailer for a bottle of Villa Maria or Campo Viejo. Find your clunkiest heavyweight goblet, and log into the No 10 Virtual Tour. Pick up your glass – “Red or white, sir?” – as you view the Terracotta Room where drinks are provided; then sip your wine while viewing the Pillared Room where guests congregate. Should you wish to avail yourself of the lavatory (surprisingly omitted from the Virtual Tour), rest assured that your own is probably not very different to the one at No 10. This will give you the whole experience; except, of course, for the opportunity to share a few words with one of the most significant, insightful and interesting people in the country. But if you send me an invite…

PK

Aldi Baron Saint Jean Vin De Pays Du Gard

Straight to the point: Baron Saint Jean is a Vin de Pays built out of what are conscientiously known on the label as regional grapes, incorporating Grenache and Merlot and a couple whose names I couldn't read, plus possibly some more, not specified. Good with toad in the hole a cardboard sign above the shelf announced at my nearest branch of German supermarket giants Aldi, which made a refreshing change from all those predictable reflexive nods to game and cheese, but how do we feel about such candour while we're shopping for wine?

Anyway. I wanted to like this drink for all the obvious reasons – screw top, very cheap, red, unpretentious sales environment, a general ideological predisposition in favour of modern affordable mass-produced everyday wines – but I have to say that I was getting nervous as I tumbled out into the car park in order to drive my loot away. Why? Because I am starting to acquire a degree of apprehension about very cheap booze in this country, and for all that it goes against Sediment's philosophy (I've bought it so I'll drink it) I am starting to wonder if, long-term, I have the constitution for rock-bottom wines.

And Baron Saint Jean was a bit of a test. Handled with extreme care, it is just about drinkable. The first gusts from the neck of the bottle practically blinded me, and if you don't give it time to shake off the cellulose and vinegar fumes while it's sitting in the glass, you will find your mouth puckering like a drawstring pouch. Sip it respectfully, and it turns into a blackcurranty kind of sluicing narrowly covering the roof of the mouth, followed by a hot gas blast in the back of the throat, a lingering impression of plastic adhesive, ending with a peppery flourish of underarm deodorant spreading down towards the lungs. Not great, but not something you could feel indifferent towards, either.

Why, then, am I drinking it at all? Apart from the usual reasons? Well, the British Government has decided that something must be done about binge drinking in this country. And what they've decided is that there ought to be some kind of minimum price attached to alchoholic beverages, to deter people at a certain level in society from buying too much of the stuff and barfing all over town centres and attacking each other and covering each other in barf and bits of teeth.

A closed world to me, obviously, because I'm too old and feeble to go out drinking and fighting and barfing but: what struck both myself and PK (quite independently) was the fact that on the BBC news when this story broke, a bottle of red wine was displayed as Exhibit A in the Government's case for the prosecution, and this bottle purported to cost no more than a wildly irresponsible £2.09, yes, £2.09 for a full 75cl bottle of some kind of red grape-based adult beverage.

That is pretty cheap, it must be said (although the inhabitants of Spain, France, Italy, Greece and so on would find it provocatively oversold, given the likely contents) and yet I've never seen anything quite as bargain-basement on sale in London. Can you only get this stuff in Doncaster? Nuneaton? Sunderland? Cardiff?

So: how far do you have to go to get near this price in the South-East; and what's the stuff taste like when you've found it?

Clearly a job for me rather than PK but given the fact that universal time as we experience it is neither circular nor elastic and I didn't feel much like exerting myself, I cut to the chase (thus failing to address question 1 altogether) and expedited a bottle of red at Aldi, going for £2.99. The price was near enough – that magical £2-and-something price point - and all I had to do was go to Hounslow to get it. Which was about as glamorous as it sounds.

As for question 2? Obviously (see above) It wasn't good. Especially not when you consider my Terraventoux at €1 a bottle. I have always welcomed mass-produced tanker wines as opening up a world of accessible non-elitist cheap'n'cheerful wine drinking. But even I couldn't get on with the Baron.

What, then, is this stuff for? This kind of drink is not a drink anyone would really want to drink. It is a means to an end. You can't drink wood preservative responsibly. It's just there to get you into a different psychic state. Which poses second question: if the Government were to slap a few more pee in duty on the price of a bottle of (say) the Baron, would it really put off a determined, impecunious, undiscerning wine drinker, whether they wanted to consume the Baron with a nice plate of Toad in the Hole, or whether they wanted to neck it in ten minutes flat and go out and break something? Anyone who drinks this grog from choice will not be easily deterred by an extra 30 or 40p on the price.

I thought I'd never say this, but the problem is less to do with the price and more to do with the terrible quality. The harmfulness of the wine lies in the fact that it's extremely difficult to treat as wine, to develop a more-than-utilitarian relationship with it. You might as well drink anti-freeze or cough syrup, for all the enjoyment there is in the consumption. And the only way to break a causal connection which posits wine as a drug and not much else - and seriously modify people's behaviour with respect to it - is to treat booze like cigarettes and price it completely out of the market.

Is this really anyone's idea of an intended consequence? Even this Government's?

CJ

Duralex

This news just in: throw away that Paris goblet (see 15 September) and that crystal toilet bowl (see 21 September) so beloved of PK. The answer to all your drinking needs is (of course!) the Duralex Picardie range of glassware. Why has it taken me so long to acquire a pack of these miraculous tumblers? Was it some residual shame at those years of schoolboy smuttiness (Durex, ha ha, we had thousands of things in the school dining hall)? Was it lack of opportunity? Was it simple laziness?

Almost certainly the last. But when I found a Picardie 6-pack in a surprisingly snotty little shop in town, I knew that Destiny had sounded its trumpet and I had to get my fix of these stupendous vessels. So I bought an inital half-dozen, and the effect is every bit as magical as I'd anticipated. Any beverage tastes better - orange juice, tapwater, whisky - while wines of all complexions are at last given that proper stage on which to express themselves.

The secret of Duralex's success? It's a tripartite strategy. 1) The faceted shape of the glass ensures plenty of flattish surfaces to press your sweating fingers against, thus ensuring a firm, steady, comforting grip at all times 2) The 16 cl version holds just the right amount for this writer, a couple of good swigs or four decorous sips before needing a refill 3) It is virtually unbreakable, so if you chance to put it woozily too close to edge of the table, or just let go of the thing altogether, no harm done. Thus it penetrates the essence of the relationship between glass and drinker, which demands reassurance: the drink is precious, the pleasure is momentary and contingent, the dignity of the drinker is vulnerable, the situation is highly charged. The glass has to be not only an extension of one's senses, but at the same time provide confirmation of a differentiated, tangible reality standing apart from human uncertainties. The Picardie is as close to perfect as I can imagine and once again, the French (cf the cubi) have found the answer to a question we English are scarcely aware of.

In other news: the notoriety of Sediment has grown to the extent that when we had some people over for supper, one of them brought a bottle of wine whose identity had been concealed by a thick sheet of paper, and invited me as a so-called wine blogger to make an intelligent guess at its provenance. I stabbed wildly at South America, turned out it was Italy: an extremely suave red called Le Volte, whose terrifying purchase price our guest would not reveal. Anyway, what did he expect? My ignorance is fathomless, and growing magically deeper with time.

And finally: I served up some of that Azzuriz stuff that PK critiqued (see 6 July) largely as the result of this same fathomless ignorance. I saw it in the supermarket, was dully hypnotised by it until I remembered that PK had done a number on it, but was quite unable to remember whether he'd liked it or not. Paid over the odds, dished the stuff up, strong chemical blast to the back of the throat, not unpleasant, but not worth £8, not by a mile. What a mug.

CJ

Le Fontegnac, Vin de Bordeaux

This post is something of a riposte, following CJ’s remarks about wineglasses. What may have seemed to many like a casual, passing reference to ‘human-head-sized wineglasses with foot-long stems that smart people drink from nowadays’ is clearly a reference to my fabulous Riedel Sommeliers Bordeaux Grand Cru glass.

This magnificent example of the glassmakers art (see picture) is, indeed, 5.5 times the size of CJ’s puny Paris goblet. It is not, however, the size of a human head. Well, maybe a baby human. Or an adult mango.

However, I can do no better than quote from Riedel themselves: “This glass, first created in 1959, is not a design gimmick but a precision instrument, developed to highlight the unique characteristics of the great wines of Bordeaux. The large bowl (capacity 30 oz) brings out the full depth of contemporary wines made from Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot.”

(And it will not get “trashed in the dishwasher”, because it won’t fit into the dishwasher.)

Given CJ’s last post, I simply had to compare it with his wretched little Paris goblet, that hideous little tennis ball of a glass condemned by George Reidel himself as “the enemy of wine”. A glass too thick and too small to enhance the flavour, too shallow and open to enhance the bouquet, and too mimsy to suggest generosity. Favourite of the hired caterer and the student party – and almost impossible to purchase nowadays.

(I kid you not; as I travelled downmarket, from John Lewis via Robert Dyas to Poundland, I still found it impossible to buy a Paris goblet. Eventually, Select and Save of Hammersmith offered me 6 for £3.99; one is in the picture above, and if anyone wants the other 5…)

You will see from the photo that the Riedel glass is considerably larger. 5.5 times larger, in fact. Along with the enhanced enjoyment of my Bordeaux. I think I did imagine that, seated at the head of the table with my tasting glass, I would immediately appear a knowledgeable connoisseur and masterful seigneur.

However, the glass may also convey the impression that I am intending to drink around 5.5 times as much as everybody else. Or to drink 5.5 times faster. Or I may just look a bit of a knob, sitting at the head of the table with a glass the size of a coconut.

Anyway, this being Sediment, I cannot, as Riedel suggests showcase “majestically structured red wines in all their complexity and finesse.” Frankly, they are strangers to this blog. But in all fairness to this “precision instrument”, I thought I had to find something which exhibited at least one of the “unique characteristics of Bordeaux.” Which Le Fontegnac, £3.99 at Sainsburys, clearly does. It comes from Bordeaux.

Something told me, however, that this was not going to have the sustenance of such great Bordeaux as 1947, 1961 or 1982. That something was, in fact, the back of the label., It says without a hint of shame, “It is recommended that this wine be consumed within 6 months of purchase.”

So, one for the Paris goblet, then. An aroma of wood – not oak, which could be promising, but wood as in Colliers – a dank, dark kind of scent. Then a shallow, fruity flavour, climaxing with palate-clenching tannins. Altogether reminiscent in my mouth of a leaking biro.

Not, I imagine, the kind of description usually employed by enthusiastic sommeliers. Interestingly, the bouquet in their Riedel glass was immediately enhanced, presumably because the wine had room to breathe. (Room? It’s got an entire apartment.)

But this was a bad thing. M. Riedel talks of his glass “unpacking the various layers of bouquet and delivering a full spectrum of aromas”. I could feel my nasal hairs cringing.

When it came to taste, again I have to say that the wine was, marginally, improved; less punishing on the palate. But that was probably because, given the surface area of a CD, it could evaporate faster. The aftertaste was just as acrid.

Where does this leave us regarding CJ and his dodgy wine/decent glass equation? Well, like an actor in a spotlight, a glass precision engineered to highlight the quality of a wine will highlight poor quality too. And if I have got to suffer the indignity of drinking wine at £3.99 a bottle, I am not simultaneously risking ridicule by cradling it in a glass the size of a small bucket.

PK

ASDA CARRACCI 2008 SHIRAZ/CABERNET

Three quid. That's what it cost. For a complete, 75cl bottle, entirely filled with red wine. Three quid. It spoke to me at ASDA, not a place I normally find myself in, but I had to get some really cheap pillows and I saw this stuff and the wino in me couldn't take his eyes off it, so I grabbed two bottles, tucked the pillows under my oxter and lumbered off to the check-out looking (quite plainly) as if I were off in search of a park bench, a rain-free day and a homeless friend.

Then I had qualms once I got home with my pauper's treasure. Three quid is not much for anything. The price of a Saturday Guardian is starting to nudge that; likewise a chocolate brownie at a motorway services; a packet of shoe insoles is probably a bit more, a discount CD bought on impulse during a visit to a rotting British seaside resort, maybe a bit less... I mean, three quid is next to nothing. Did I really want to drink this stuff? Anyway, I brooded on it for a bit until I remembered a discussion I'd had with PK.

The gist of which was that he couldn't understand why anyone would dishonour a good wine by serving it in a cheap wine glass; whereas I didn't much care either way, the old Paris goblet having numerous virtues, including near-unbreakability, a comforting fit in the hand, good mouthful-to-contents ratio. But he went on about a good big glass being necessary to let the grog breathe and warm up and open out and tell its story to the drinker. So I invoked a reverse rationale: arguing to myself that a dodgy wine, if served in a decent glass, will be framed so effectively by its container that it'll taste like the Ribena of the gods.

Do we have any of those human-head-sized wineglasses with foot-long stems that smart people drink from nowadays? Of course not. If we ever did have them, they got broken long ago, trashed in the dishwasher or snapped carelessly in two by my delinquent fingers. But I poked around in a forgotten kitchen cupboard and what did I find but some pleasingly weighty Edwardian-looking things in cut glass or crystal, which I can only assume were given to us by someone because we quite obviously neither could nor would buy objects such as these, not in this lifetime.

So I poured ASDA into one of these Mrs. Keppel glasses, while using a regulation Utility goblet as a control (see illustration), let it settle/breathe/decompose for a few minutes, and took a swig.

My standards (see previous posts, and indeed this post) are lamentably low, but I have to say that even served in gleaming cut glass in a well-lit and temperate room, ASDA's Carricci was pretty challenging. Once I'd uncrossed my eyes and taken a reference sip from the Paris goblet - just in case the fancy glass had recently been washed in bleach or had a dead spider in the bottom - I decided that it tasted, essentially, of suede. It was disappointing. It was disappointing because I'd convinced myself that a £3 bottle was the answer to a vulgar prayer; and that even if it wasn't, I could re-invent the stuff, Pygmalion-style by dressing it up and endowing it with a phoney accent. A shabby new world would then be mine for the asking.

But it wasn't. The wine tasted of suede all the way down to the bottom, whichever glass I drank it from. And I'd bought two bottles! Luckily, I palmed at least half of the second bottle off onto No.1 son (who either didn't notice or couldn't be arsed to complain) and that dealt with the problem, such as it was. And the thing is, although this experiment was a bust, I still feel moved to try and find ways to deceive the senses by re-contextualising the drink. Already I am planning to decant the cheapest of beverages into baronial containers, consume it blindfolded, smoke while drinking, eat cheese before during and after, glug straight from the bottle and out of unfamiliar receptacles (tea cups; ink bottles; Tupperware). The mind/body nexus is mutable and capable of being tricked. I will not let this one go.

CJ