FOOD & DRINK
A VINTNER’S TALE (ACT 2, SCENE V) Peter Law, Chairman and MD at Wine Wizzard in Castle Cary, continues with his fascinating tales of life in the wine trade…. I started learning French aged four at Miss Primroses’ kindergarten. I must have been a Francophile from a very young age. I still have some French toy cars from the early 1950s when Liverpool-based Dinky had a Paris factory; Citroën’s 2CV, Tube and Traction Avant. Aged about 13, I took Le Figaro on Saturdays (precocious brat!). It was much too difficult. Aged about 14 or 15, my parents sent me to Paris to improve my French – I learned a lot, but not much French! It was about this time that I discovered Brigitte Bardot and thought that if that’s French girls, I am going to learn French and that is part of the reason I became a wine merchant! I have lived in France on and off over the years. It is a very varied and mostly beautiful country. One of its problems is that it has never come to terms with the very darkest problems of WWII. My father, a war-time naval commander, would have been very disappointed if he had known that I had lived there. Sadly, he never met any of the Resistance fighters who befriended me and so admired the Brits. As with many close neighbours, there are always spats and sometime even wars; politics, religion, empires, vanity. Let us hope that common sense prevails – though it is a rather rare and precious commodity these days. Back in the 1970s at The Malmesbury Vintner, in the middle of a ‘lamb war’ with France, I stopped off for a pint in Castle Coombe in Wiltshire. Someone had added graffiti on the contraceptive machine in the gents ‘if the French won’t buy our
32
lamb, don’t buy their letters’! When I lived in France, there was lots of equally goodnatured banter. The summer of 1976 was very hot and an artist friend designed a huge sign outside the shop depicting a tap under which it read ‘save water – drink wine’. That summer I had to send three emergency lorries to France to collect an additional 36,000 bottles of wine! Every night was party night. On a skiing trip to Italy one winter, there was little or no snow so I decided (flash Harry) – when in Rome – la dolce vita – to hire a Ferrari. I ended up with a very old Fiat 500 and went wine tasting. I bought lots of delightful wines which I imported for a few years, before the supplier sold the business (unbeknown to me) to an industrialist and the prices went through the roof and the quality through the floor. I sold it all to the Italian restaurant trade in London. Later that year I was in Ajaccio, Corsica – very bad timing as the French president was also there and it was swarming with heavily armed soldiers, gendarmes and Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS), so once again I went wine tasting and found some charming wines. On my buying travels, I like to meet the real indigenous people of the area. I was in a dive bar in the port area of Ajaccio, very crowded, low-ceilinged and full of smoke. There was only one seat left and I asked the white-haired and Zapata-
moustached man if I could join him. There were and probably still are bandits in Corsica and this one really looked like the boss. He almost immediately took a flickknife from his pocket and as it opened he put his hand into another pocket. Oh no! Not a Beretta! It was a tin of sardines which he promptly stabbed and offered me. I returned a couple of evenings later and wished I hadn’t. Once again it was crowded and a man came in with a shovel and wheelbarrow and promptly emptied the lavatory at the far end of the bar! First and last time, I hope. On a more savoury note, Christmas is fast approaching and celebration needed. Whilst writing (mid-November), we are awaiting customs clearance of £30,000 worth of clarets at the bonded warehouse in Essex. We don’t have the storage space in Castle Cary and apart from this, the lorries wouldn’t be able to get in or out. Burgundy is due any day. In addition to our usual selection of fine wines, there is a 20-year-old Bas Armagnac, a Christmas spiced gin, port, sherry, very fine champagne, as you should expect from a vintner with nearly sixty years’ experience. (Problem – getting older!) The Mint is running out of accolades for Linda who has not only made the shop look splendid but is running it splendidly. Chapeau! As they say in France. (Hats off!) We wish everyone a happy, merry Christmas – keep safe, keep well, drink well!
