Consuming Interest
Ladies' Halves
By ELIZABETH DAVID
WHAT on earth comes over wine waiters when they take the orders of a woman entertaining another woman in a res- taurant? Twice in one week recently I have dined in different restaur- ants (not, admittedly, in the expense-account belt of the West End, where women executives have tables and bottles of 1945 Margaux permanently at the ready, or it's nice to think so, anyway) and with different women friends, on one occasion as the hostess and on the other as the guest. On both occasions, after the regulation lapse of twenty minutes, the wine waiter brought a half-bottle of the wine or- dered instead of a whole one. Please don't think I have anything against half-bottles; on the contrary, I find they have a special charm of their own. There are occasions when a half is what one wants, a half and nothing else, in which case I really don't believe one has to be a master-woman to be capable of specifying one's wishes in the matter. I suppose the assumption on the part of wine waiters that women are too frail to consume or too stingy to pay for a whole bottle must be based on some sort of experience, but instead of having to go back to change the order (ten minutes the second time. one is getting edgy by then, and well into the second course; if they held up the food to synchronise with the wine one mightn't mind so much) he could inquire in the first place, in a discreet way. Or even in an indiscreet way, like the steward on the Edinburgh-London express a few years ago who yelled at me across the rattling crockery and two other bemused passengers, 'A bottle, madam? A whole bottle? Do you know how large a whole bottle is?'
A new restaurant called Fisherman's Wharf in the Brompton Road might appear at first glance to be an amateur Chelsea-Belgravia venture, but is very quickly revealed as a professional one. No amount of massed fishing nets and scallop shells, sea-green and whiter-than-white laminated plas- tic, waiters dressed in London bistro rig, and mooring fees instead of cover charges (some quite high caulkage levies, too) can conceal the personality of a Lyons establishment. I sup- pose it is the manager who gives the game away; he is not only dressed as a restaurant manager, in traditional clothes, but very obviously is one,
and one of experience and authority, so it was not for me to question his assertion, in answer to my inquiry, that 'carafe wine is never named.'
I know that it is often not named on the wine list because it is liable to be changed from time to time (i.e., sometimes a Spanish, let's say, sometimes an Algerian or a Portuguese or a Yugoslav, or even a Bordeaux) and one does not expect names of shippers or vintages, but is it unreasonable for the customer to wish to know at least the provenance of what he is about to drink? I don't remember ever having been denied the information before, but perhaps it is tactless to ask, and replies given in other restaurants simply improvisation on the part of the waiters? It's just that to have a civil request rret with a curt refusal makes one uneasy. What is in their carafes, then, that the management won't own up to it?
With the exception of ordinary cafes and the relais routiers, where you get ordinaries by the litre, few restaurants or hotels in Provence now offer much alternative to fancy-bottled Proven- çal wines at prices comparing unfavourably with what one would pay for much more classy Alsace, Loire or Beaujolais wines if one were travelling in these districts. One can't have everything, and for me Provence has more than most other provinces of France, so one doesn't complain, and what the local wines may lack in distinction is partly made up for, at least in retrospect, by the evocativeness of their names and the coaxing messages which some of the proprietors send out with—not in—their bottles. In my notebooks of recent Provençal journeys 1 find Chante-Gorge, Rocmaure, Domaine de l'Aumerade, Castel Roubine, Domaine de Lacroix, Tavel Reserve de St. Estello ('Pour epousailles et fiancailles, Rien qui ne vaille Ce bon yin vieux, Beni de Dieu'), Bouquet de Provence, Blanc Coquillages, Château de Font- creuse, Clos Mireille, Petit Duc, Prince d'Orange, Cotes du Ventoux 1956 (`Au Pied du Mt. Ven- tota Je suis ne et j'ai vieilli pour vous'), Clos de la Dames de Baux, Roustidou (now there's a good name for a carafe wine; it tasted uncommonly like Algerian, and made a splendid picnic drink), Château de Beaulieu, Château Rayas, Château Roubaud (a trusty friend, that one), Cotes de Provence BIG, Gigondas Pierre Amadieu (the one I go for when it's on the list), Chante- Perdrix Cornas 1955, red, ravishing with a grilled chicken at the restaurant David (no rela- tion) at Roussillon in the Vaucluse. Cornas is on the west bank of the Rhone near St. Peray and opposite Valence, so it is still a long way north of Provence, but it is round about here, at least if one drives down N8 instead of the terrifying N7, that one begins to sense the Midi; and like the Hermitage from Tain on the other bank, the wines of Cornas and the Cote Rtitie are always associated in my mind with Provence and on my table, when I can get them, with Provencal food. Some 1953 Hermitage bought about five years ago from Avery's of Bristol is now proving a most rewarding in- vestment.
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