“Actually, they want me to become a Minstrel of Wine.”
“Ha!” Joan let out a shriek of delight. “You? That is hilarious! You haven’t got a hope.”
“I was hoping you might give me a few tips actually Joan. As a kind of mentor.”
“Sorry Felix. That’s just not possible. Institute rules.”
It was true, not that the old cow would have helped me anyway. The Worshipful Institute of the Minstrels of Wine imposed a code of silence, known as the omertà di vino. Nothing that took place in the final exam, with the exception of the candidate’s choice of musical recital piece, could be revealed outside the Institute. To break the omertà would result in expulsion from the Institute and a bar on any job associated with wine anywhere in the world. Given the influence wielded by senior Minstrels, who dominated the boards of most major wineries and wine merchants, as well as the wine-buying departments of all major supermarkets worldwide, this was no idle threat.
All that was really known of the final exam, La Vendange or ‘The Harvest’, was the existence of a gigantic blind tasting at which the student had to correctly identify the overwhelming majority of the wines. No spitting was permitted – all wine had to be swallowed. Students who correctly identified enough wines then proceeded to the second stage, Le Récital, where they performed a piece of classical music, scored by a panel of senior Minstrels. If the student was awarded a high enough score, they were judged worthy of initiation into the Worshipful Institute of the Minstrels of Wine.
The Institute itself traced its origins back to Ancient Greece and the pagan cult of Dionysus, God of Wine, the Harvest and Theatre. Back then the grape harvest would have been accompanied by a festival of singing and dancing and, presumably, a right old orgy of shagging, hence the Institute’s insistence on both a comprehensive wine knowledge and a mastery of classical music. The latter, it was generally acknowledged, had the useful secondary purpose of weeding out the plebs and ensuring the Institute’s membership remained dominated by a better class of arsehole.
As a result of the omertà, a legend had grown around the final exam. There were tales of a befuddled student projectile-vomiting over the piano keys while tackling Rachmaninov, and another stumbling, stupefied with drink, into her own harp strings. One student, a gifted classical trombonist, was said to have nearly choked to death on regurgitated Claret after confusing his breathing during a tricky passage of the Rimsky-Korsakov Trombone Concerto.
But, light-hearted moments aside, there was a darker side to the Minstrels. Such was the pressure to pass, and so huge the benefits of initiation, that many young winemakers and sommeliers who stumbled at the final hurdle had taken their own lives. Only the previous year, a sensitive young Chilean winemaker drowned himself in a vat of his own Merlot, such was his distress at failing.
“What was your recital piece then Joan? I believe you’re allowed to tell me that.”
“Vivaldi’s Flute Concerto No. 3 in D major,” she replied primly.
I could just imagine her trilling her prissy way through a flute concerto, like a smug swot. “Did you puke down the pipe at all?”
Joan looked up from her screen. “You’re an immature idiot, Felix. Do you even play a musical instrument?”
“Is the bass guitar permitted?”
“If you can find a pre-1910 piece of classical music for the amplified bass guitar, Felix, then you’re welcome to perform it.”
“How about Morris dancing? Would that be allowed?”
“Good luck with your studies, Felix, it’s been nice working with you. I am so looking forward to next January’s La Vendange.” She put on an innocent face. “I wonder who they’ll employ in your place next year. Our Head of Execution doesn’t really tolerate failure, does he?”
“Failure Joan? I don’t know the meaning of the word.” Bugger, I thought. That’s twelve months of hard study when I’d rather be smoking grass and shooting pool down the Green Lanes Billiards Club with Tariq, Dan and the boys. Still, there are worse things to study than wine and, in the extremely unlikely event of my passing the exam, I’d be made for life.
***
Gatesave duly paid ten thousand Swiss francs into the Institute’s offshore bank account for my tuition, but not before Gordon Bannerman, Head of Execution, caught me a sucker punch as he passed me in the queue at the canteen and whispered into my ear as I fought for breath, “That’s nothing compared to what you’ll get if you waste that ten grand.”
The next few months passed relatively quickly. I was treated with a modicum more respect by Joan, despite the rather slim possibility of my elevation to the rank of Minstrel. She would invite me to her selection tastings, occasionally asking my opinion of a particular Burgundy within a hundred-strong line-up and giving a grudging nod if I gave an articulate answer.
I attended the other wine buyers’ tastings, too, paying close attention to their comments, and I became proficient at writing rapid tasting notes with one hand, while swirling and nosing a glass with the other. After a while I could write a recognisably different description for fifty Australian Chardonnays in the course of an hour.
Every Wednesday evening I attended a class at the headquarters of the Minstrels of Wine, a huge stone building on Central London’s Long Acre, its grand entrance flanked by two huge, naked cherubs each caressing a bottle of wine. Students were not permitted to enter through the main door – a side entrance led directly to the Théâtre de la Véraison or ‘Ripening Hall’ where a fully fledged Minstrel would deliver a seminar on a particular wine region, accompanied by fifty small glasses of wine from that area. One week might be Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, the next might be Pinot Noir from Oregon.
Spitting was absolutely forbidden on all Minstrel of Wine premises, out of deference to Dionysus. It was considered an insult to the gods to waste a drop of wine that had passed one’s lips. One had to take as small a sip as possible, write a detailed tasting note, and swallow. At first I tended to take a rather large gulp of each wine but quickly found it impossible to write coherent tasting notes after a couple of dozen glasses, and my first few lectures ended with a copious throwing-up in the back streets of Covent Garden. Any vomiting on the premises would result in immediate expulsion from the course, a fate that befell several less robust students within the first month.
During the course of each lecture, as each wine was sampled, the tutor would choose a student to stand and describe it in detail. The student would have to fluently catalogue the wine’s composition, place of origin, the variety of wood that made up the storage barrel and the species of toenail fungus afflicting the peasant who had trodden the grapes. I jest on the final point, of course, but only just. It was an intense experience and the tutors were merciless with any student who failed to give an eloquent characterisation of a wine, which of course became harder the more we drank.
One unfortunate young lady, an apprentice sommelier at an up-market London hotel, was suddenly lost for words when obliged to stand and describe the twenty-fifth wine in a line-up of Greek dessert wines. Stumbling slightly as she stood, and leaning heavily on the desk in front, she raised the glass to the light and stuttered “Fruity…”
“Fruiteee?” roared that evening’s tutor, a bearded winemaker from the island of Santorini. If he’d had a peg leg he would have been the spitting image of a cartoon-book pirate. “That ees all? Fruiteee? Here is fruiteee!”
He lifted a heavy bunch of red grapes from an earlier demonstration and pushed them into the hapless student’s face. She staggered backwards and fell into her chair, grape juice running down her chin and staining her shirt. It was an appalling piece of bullying behaviour and, I thought, very funny. Of course, there was no chance of him being reported or sanctioned – every student was there to ascend to the rank of Minstrel of Wine and a complaint to the institute would be a sentence of death for one’s career.
Every month there would be an exam on what we had learnt to date. It consisted of a three-hour written e
xam accompanied by twenty glasses of wine. In addition to theory questions on methods of vine growing and barrel making, each wine had to be sampled, swallowed, a lyrical tasting note written, and the wine’s region identified. Points were gained for the eloquence of the tasting note and a bonus if the tasting note rhymed.
These monthly tests were high-pressure affairs. If you failed to identify the region of at least three quarters of the wines, or if the lyricism of your tasting notes was found wanting, you were failed and that was the end of the course for you. The class began with everyone standing and a roll call of those who had passed was read by the tutor. Each student was permitted to sit only when their name was called. Those who remained standing when the roll call was over were expected to leave the room, never to return.
There was no opportunity to re-sit the test, and nobody was ever permitted to re-start the Minstrel of Wine course. Inevitably there were tears and pleas when the handful of still-standing failures were left exposed at the end of the roll call. Some students didn’t make it to the end of the roll call, fainting at the pressure of being among the final few standing. But any protest was to no effect. No explanations were given as to why a student had failed. The tutor would simply state solemnly that some of the assembled had failed to please the gods. And that was that.
Now, I wouldn’t want you to think me a heartless wretch or immune to the pressure of these occasions. If anything, the pressure on me was greater than for most of my fellow students – failure implying a knee in the nuts from the Head of Execution and the end of my career at Gatesave. Many of my fellow wannabe Minstrels could at least flit back to Daddy’s vineyard or a dusty career advising chinless wonders on the value of their wine cellars, while I would be reduced to mucking out the stables at Cackering Hall, my dreams of international travel, drinking and shaggery well and truly sunk.
But the pressure focused my mind and, though I say so myself, I found I had rather a knack for identifying wines and writing suitably flowery words of praise. I was usually pretty sure I’d passed each monthly exam, and so it proved to be. That’s not to say there weren’t a few squeaky-bum moments when we were down to the final dozen still standing in the lecture hall the week following an exam. But the tutor always called ‘Hart!’ before the end and, with sweat dripping from my armpits, I would gratefully sink into my seat.
***
It was early autumn when I received my annual phone call from Portia.
“Hello Felix. Hope you’re well. I thought you might want to know how Woolf is doing?” She’d named our son after Virginia, the author. Apparently her feminist support group had a list of approved names for boys.
“I’m dying to know Portia. Does he speak Latin yet?”
“Don’t be an arse, Felix, he’s only four. He’s doing very well. Actually, I’m calling because one of our neighbours needs help.”
“Sorry Portia, I’m not really qualified to deliver calves.”
“He’s not a dairy farmer, stupid, he’s a wine farmer. It’s Jeremy Spott-Hythe.”
“I thought Jeremy was that infant you were supposed to marry? Do they allow small children to make wine in Kent?”
“Not him, his father. All the first-born males in the Spott-Hythe family are called Jeremy. It does make things confusing. Anyway, he wants to know whether he can sell his new sparkling wine to Gatesave. Will you go and see him?”
“I suppose so. I don’t have to visit Cackering Hall and see your parents, do I?” I shuddered at the memory of tearing around under that dining table on my hands and knees, her lunatic father threatening to discharge his shotgun into my tender regions.
“No, that’s not permitted. Woolf is at a very impressionable age and my feminist support group says he must be protected from exposure to alpha males if he is to develop into a truly empathising new man.”
Fine by me, I thought.
And so, on a fine September afternoon I made the journey to Chateau Spott-Hythe, a large stone farmhouse in the heart of the Garden of England. I trudged up the track to the door, vineyards either side of me hanging with plump ripe grapes. I knocked on the half-door and a tall man opened the upper part. He was around fifty, tall and bare-chested, and gave me a wide grin with wine-stained teeth.
“Ears?” he boomed, in an exceptionally posh voice.
“I beg your pardon? Are you Jeremy Spott-Hythe?”
“Ears!” he boomed again.
“Ears?” I repeated. This was more difficult than I’d expected. Was it some sort of test?
“Ears. I’m Spott-Hythe. Are you the supermarket fellow?”
“Ah, yes. I am.” The penny dropped. He’d been saying ‘yes’, not ‘ears’. He really was very, very posh. “Felix Hart, nice to meet you.”
“Good-o. Come on in!”
He opened the lower half of the door, revealing that he wasn’t just bare chested, but entirely naked. He turned and walked back into the farmhouse kitchen, his wrinkled bottom cheeks just failing to obscure his low-hanging bollock bag. I followed, somewhat apprehensively.
“Have a seat, old chap.”
I sat at the large farmhouse table, which was littered with half-full glasses of red and white wine. Spott-Hythe stood at the other end, dancing from one foot to the other, his dickory dock swinging like a pub sign in a strong wind.
“I couldn’t help noticing that you’re wearing no clothes,” I said.
Spott-Hythe looked down. “Ah yes. Fancy that. Never mind. One finds it easier to detect changes in atmospheric pressure when one is unencumbered by clothing. It informs one when it’s time to pick the grapes, you see.”
Good Lord, you really are a chinless bloody lunatic, I thought. “Right, I see. I understand you would like to sell your wine to Gatesave?”
“Well, ears, that would be wonderful.” He turned and grabbed an unlabelled green bottle from a shelf. “Here, you must try our sparkling wine. This is from our first vintage, two yars ago.” He popped the cork and a little foam bubbled from the neck as he poured me a half-glass. “Lively little bugger,” he chuckled as he stretched over to pass me the wine, his meat and veg swinging like an unsecured wrecking ball.
I sniffed the glass and was struck by the attractive, brioche-scented aroma. I took a sip and the bubbles danced over my tongue like creamy lemon sherbet. “That’s rather good, actually.”
“Yippee!” Spott-Hythe beamed and gave a little jump, sending his flapdoodle spinning like a windmill. “I’ve just opened my rosé fizz too, would you like a taste?”
“Is that your rosé there?”
I pointed to the vessel on the table, right in front of his groin. His whirling frankfurter had come to rest in the glass, the bulbous end dunking itself into the liquid like a thirsty baby elephant.
“Oh. I’ll pour you another, shall I?”
“If you wouldn’t mind. I think that one might be corked.”
He passed me a fresh glass of the delicate pink sparkler. It was also excellent, a delicious riot of chilled strawberries and vanilla. Leaving aside his eccentric approach to common decency, Spott-Hythe clearly knew what he was doing in the vineyard.
“What do you call the wine?”
“My wife does all the creative stuff. She’s decided to call it Cuvée Placenta.”
I was taking another sip and I spluttered slightly. “That’s a… memorable name. May I ask why?”
“It represents one’s connection with the earth mother, or something. Let me ask her.” Spott-Hythe turned and called over his shoulder. “Darling? Come and meet the nice man from the supermarket. He wants to talk about our wine.”
Please don’t let her be naked too, I prayed.
Mrs Spott-Hythe strode into the kitchen. She had long, straggly grey hair and wore a rough, knitted kaftan, leaving her arms and legs exposed. “So, the evil forces of capitalism arrive at our kitchen table!” she declared, in a not-unfriendly way.
“Yes indeed. Nice to meet you too, Mrs Spott-Hythe.”
“Felix was just
complementing us on the name Cuvée Placenta, darling.”
“Yes. Our wine represents the connection between our bodies and the soil, our own offspring and the earth mother, the fluid of birth and our own, yielding flesh.”
Christ on a bike. “It’s a lovely concept. But some of our customers are less progressive in their thinking. You might find a slightly more conventional name would work better.”
“Like what?” sulked Mrs Spott-Hythe.
“A woman’s name often makes a very attractive descriptor for a wine. May I ask what your first name is?”
“Calathripia.”
“That’s nice. How about Cuvée Georgina?” I suggested, after a pause. “Or something like that?”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with ‘placenta’, but maybe we could look at it,” she replied warily.
“Would you like to see the press house Felix?” asked Spott-Hythe. “The harvest is under way and the grapes are being trodden.”
I agreed and we set out for the outlying farm buildings. Spott-Hythe, thank God, pulled an old waxed jacket over his naked body before leaving the house.
“We pay unemployed youths from Ashford to tread the grapes,” explained Mrs Spott-Hythe. “They find it quite liberating being out in the countryside, away from the mental pollution of urban materialism. It’s tough, physical work but I read them my radical poetry to keep them motivated.”
We entered the press house where a dozen bored-looking youths in shorts were walking up and down a shallow, cement-walled tank. Every so often a vineyard worker would walk in and pour a large plastic crate of grapes into the mix. Their faces fell when they caught sight of Mrs Spott-Hythe.
“Good work, boys and girls, keep it up,” she called. “Feel the produce of Mother Earth between your toes and rejoice that you are part of her eternal cycle!” She reached under her kaftan and pulled out a crumpled notebook. “I have written a new poem, to celebrate the glory of the vintage and your temporary rescue from the clutches of pseudo-aspiration.”
A couple of the workers rolled their eyes.
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