Diary of a Wine Writer

This morning, I have no choice but to catch a criminally expensive peak time morning train, so that I can arrive on time for the Institute of Masters of Wine “Cristal” seminar, tutored by winemaker Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon. It costs me a £100, but I do get to taste rarities back to 1979 and Lecaillon’s insight is both illuminating and entertaining. Unfortunately, there are no West Coast rappers escorted by their “bitches” in the audience. Instead, there is a posse of enthusiastic MW students, though not a single one is grinding their bootie in a postage-stamp sized leopard-print bikini, not even Serena S. seated behind me.

In fact, I am almost refused admittance into the hallowed chambers of the Goldsmith’s Hall due to my provocative white Merrell trainers. The security guard looks me up and down, barely able to disguise his disdain, glares at my footware and I ponders whether he should call in the Rottweilers? I lie and tell him that I have already paid for my ticket and I feel him bristle with contempt as he has no choice but to let me besmirch his establishment.

Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon about to launch into 99 Problems.

As usual, the IMW seminar drags on longer than expected, but it is certainly worth both the entrance fee and the reproving glare from the security guard. I have typed 3,000+ words during the course of the tasting, so much of the article is already composed in situ (thank the Lord he let me touch type – saves you hours of labour.)

Afterwards I have a quick chat with Thomas Do-Chi-Nam (winemaker for Chateau Pichon-Lalande, also under the umbrella of the Rouzaud family since 2006…perhaps he is considering a sparkling Pichon 2009?) and with Cristal ’79 lingering tantalizingly on my palate, it is off to a second tasting of Australian supermarket Semillons to bring me back down to Earth. It’s not glamour all the time y’know. Unfortunately my tube remains stationary at St. Pauls due to a faulty train at Holborn and the passengers are unceremoniously ejected into a rain-drenched St. Paul’s to catch a bus that inevitably becomes mired in a log-jam of traffic threading towards Oxford Street. I pass the time with my nose stuck in the absorbing thriller: The Billionaire’s Vinegar. I know quite a few of the people in the book, including Michael Broadbent of course, which makes it doubly fascinating.

I return home around five, drenched to the skin as I forgot my umbrella, bath Lily and Daisy, teach the former the “QU” sound as part of her on-going English education (all part of my free service as father), spend an hour or two writing, enjoy a New Zealand Gewurztraminer over dinner that could do with more acidity towards the finish, then fall into a coma on the sofa in the middle of Andrew Marr’s “The Making of Britain” as my metabolism is yet to convert back to GMT.

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