Let Auld Acquaintance
By DENZIL BATCHELOR
T is a comforting, Christmassy thought that I next to sport and religion, both pledged to re- establish the Human Brotherhood, nothing leads
to lifelong quarrels and a speedier disintegration of the family than wine that maketh glad the heart of man.
Not even the annual row as to what bird should be chosen for Christmas dinner does the job more thoroughly. Indeed, this bird-fancying exercise, however promisingly pulverising, can actually lead to goodwill: as when my uncle Hercules (named not after the hero of mythology but my great-aunt's bicycle), insisted on goose, was fobbed off with turkey, never knew the difference, and on being exposed re-established himself with the ex- planation that in Zululand for the last fifty years he had not been within 300 miles of a white woman.
But wine can be trusted to put things wrong without loss of time. Last year my uncle Hercules accused his host of being a wine-snob because he preferred claret (which he chose to call 'wine from the Haut-Medoc') to mulled Algerian which the wine merchant had guaranteed as the best thing to promote the Christmas spirit and break the ice. 'I am sure your friend is right about it being suit- able for ice-breaking,' his host had admitted. 'It has much the flavour of an ice-pick. And I hope I am the sort of man someone like you would con- sider a wine-snob. I also prefer Leonardo to what- ever you like in Punch. Does that make me a picture-snob?'
The Save the Cartoon appeal had never really penetrated Zululand, so Hercules was able to re- ply with the dignity of ignorance that he might be old-fashioned but he considered Italian wines never travelled; and as for punch, what was good enough for Dickens was just what was needed at Christmas time. As the only Dickens his host had heard of was the author of the comic strip 'Bris- tow' in the Evening Standard (whose cartoons he privately preferred to Leonardo's), a confused peace broke out.
His host's wife believed in peace at any price. She was the sort of DP from the Shires who had a corner in SW7 in cute little wines that other travellers might have overlooked. 'Ah, Switzer- land!' she breathed. 'At this time of year, it seems un-English not to be in Switzerland, With a great log fire and a charming fondant. . .
'Fudge for me,' said Hercules, and his host and hostess, while agreeing not to ask him this year, are still arguing about what he meant.
But, of course, you will argue that people like that do not deserve wine, or Christmas. They order things better in Bloomsbury, or even in Fauntleroy from which the Marquis always writes at this time of year to ask if I'm on the track of that Beaujolais his first wife enjoyed so much be- fore dying in convulsions a few Christmases ago. Others are always saying it is far too long since we met: the Marquis employs no such thread- bare technique. Nothing would have delighted them more, he assures me, than to join us at Christmas, but his second wife is very frail. It's the old digestive trouble—these Texans have al- ways done themselves too well and the doctor has forbidden her all red wine from now on.
In Bloomsbury life is simpler, because the Pro- fessor and Selina not only concede that there has been no real post-phylloxera wine that is potable, but they are fond of quoting Warner Allen : 'After AuSonius the darkness deepens quickly. • • • Charlemagne would surely have been a patron of fine wine, if its secret had not been lost.' On Christmas Day they become almost boisterous hosts and while the Professor is busy opening the claret they prefer to speak of as Gascon wine with a pair of Byzantine nippers, Selina apologises like a woman of the world for its geodes, 'what the natives here call goat de terroir.'
'And let us obey the local custom and sacrifice a cock to Aesculapius,' says the Professor, lead" ing us to the table. But his heart isn't in it. Things. were surely, he says, better in Asia Minor when Victor Bdrard at a monastery dinner was given the eye of a lamb which had been basted with mouthfuls of wine expectorated over it by a lay brother.
We set about the battery chicken and CI'll bour- geois with what Selina calls country appetites. So it goes on, at every Christmas dinner table. the great sport of 1962, the first round of the knock-out championship of the New °mat' science. Tom has drunk—sorry, has been show° —a Lafite 1864. Maevc spent July in Talloires, oh, no, not at all to be near the Pere Bise, but to be able to drink exquisite, dagger-sharp CrepY °rI the spot. Goldwyn, the banker, is trying a take'
over bid for Château Montrose: he is hoping for the American market, which he would like to in vade with a portrait of the Duke of Montrose 0° the label. And at every table wine must not only be liked, it must be seen to be liked.
Thank Heaven, Christmas will soon be over, and I can return from my orgy of boastful hos- pitality to the unsullied joy of secret drinking. For at this stage in the world's history wines are wonderful, but not people. Wine is much too good for the horrible humans who become more hor- rible yet through drinking it, If I had one piece of advice to give, it is that one bottle split between one is the best rule this Christmas, next Christmas and for ever.
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