Wine Season

In recent months, on the advice of a weight-lifting comrade, I've been drinking greater quantities of red wine in the evening.

I'm not a wine snob, as you know, but I do enjoy it. I was raised on good wine--courtesy of my parents and the environments in which I grew up (for which I'm extremely grateful)--but I never developed a love or obsession with it, like a lot of chaps I know. It's boring to me. Wine is to be enjoyed, not studied. Still, knowing a bit about wine can be good for business. It's also good for meeting women. They fucking love the stuff.

The exclusive photo (above) shows two recent acquisitions for my table. Nothing particularly fancy, mind you. But, as you will notice, there was a certain je ne sais quoi about each of these bottles that drew me in.

Wine & Hope

“I rejoiced in the Burgundy. How can I describe it? The Pathetic Fallacy resounds in all our praise of wine. For centuries every language has been strained to define its beauty, and has produced only wild conceits or the stock epithets of the trade. This Burgundy seemed to me, then, serene and triumphant, a reminder that the world was an older and better place than Rex knew, that mankind in its long passion had learned another wisdom than his. By chance I met this same wine again, lunching with my wine merchant in St. James’s Street, in the first autumn of the war; it had softened and faded in the intervening years, but it still spoke in the pure, authentic accent of its prime and, that day, as at Paillard’s with Rex Mottram years before, it whispered faintly, but in the same lapidary phrase, the same words of hope.”

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (1945)

For The Love Of Success

Last weekend I nailed a young brunette hottie 12 years my junior.

We met at a wine bar in Newport Beach. Bored and companionless for the evening, I had decided to go out on my own. I stood at the bar, drinking cabernet sauvignon, watching a recording of the Germany-Greece football match from earlier in the day. I can appreciate good wine--I was practically raised on the stuff--but I'm just not that into it. Still, female wine drinkers can be an amusingly superficial, silly lot and wine bars tend to attract a certain kind of young woman. Years of hitting the upscale bar scene alone or with a friend or two have made me extremely confident in this environment.

Surrounded by an orbit of flirtatious women in tight clothing, whose interest in me was as obvious as their perfume was strong, I noticed her sitting with another girl at a nearby table. When her friend momentarily got up and left, I walked over, smiling, wine glass in hand. She looked like a much younger version of the actress Marisa Tomei. I said something that made her laugh, ordered her another glass, and then said we should get two seats at the bar where I could watch the end of the game. Her friend returned briefly, and then said her goodbyes. Later, over a bottle of pinot noir, we discovered shared tastes in politics, movies, and sex. She was recently separated, she told me, and lived nearby with a roommate.

She tried to spring a jealousy shit test on me. When she started chatting with two young men at a nearby table who had been staring at her, I merely laughed and gently encouraged her. They were friendly chaps and the conversation soon turned to Euro 2012. When one of them made a suggestive remark to her, she rubbed my back and replied: "No, he doesn't get jealous". Which is true. From that moment she couldn't take her hands off me, slowly rubbing her hips on my thigh or stroking my large, tanned forearms.

At my place she stood in the library, glass of water in hand, admiring the books, framed prints, and various exotic souvenirs, occasionally asking a question about one item or another. We soon kissed, undressed, and went upstairs. She smelled deliciously of coconut body oil. In between bouts of sweaty sex, where I pounded her into the bed, she discussed her failing marriage. She made a comment that I found very interesting: "I don't want a man to feel as if his happiness depends on me." Obvious, of course, but the reminder alone was worth the soaked, stained sheets. It is something that all men, expecially single men, should take to heart and be reminded of now and then. One's happiness does not depend on a woman, but rather on achieving success in other arenas, at the office, on the sports field, in the studio, or in battle. Satisfaction comes from manly accomplishment. Stay focused and take your own side first. Put yourself above all--and women will, too.

That was several days ago. I haven't contacted her since. I did find an elastic hairband of hers on the floor behind the bed, which I disposed of in case certain interested parties found it. But last night, as I was draining the last cocktail of the evening and getting ready to head upstairs to bed, she texted me: "I've been thinking about Friday night. I want more of what you've got". Stay tuned.

Evelyn Waugh on Wine

'...It is a little shy wine like a gazelle.'

'Like a leprechaun.'

'Dappled, in a tapestry meadow.'

'Like a flute by still water.'

'A prophet in a cave.'

'...And this is a necklace of pearls on a white neck.'

'Like a swan.'

'Like the last unicorn.'

'Ought we to be drunk every night?' Sebastian asked one morning.

'Yes, I think so.'

'I think so too.'

Waugh on Wine

Drinking (Evelyn Waugh)

In my childhood wine was a rare treat; an adult privilege to which I was admitted on special occasions. At my school there was no tabu against drinking (as there was against tobacco). Housemasters occasionally made a mild grog or cup for senior boys. I remember being embarrassed when one Ascension Day (a whole holiday) my companion got very drunk on liqueurs at a neighbouring hotel. It was at the university that I took to drink, discovering in a crude way the contrasting pleasures of intoxication and discrimination. Of the two, I preferred the former.

I think that my generation at Oxford, 1921-1924, was the last to preserve more or less intact the social habits of the nineteenth century. The ex-service men of the First War had gone down. Undergraduate motor-cars were very few. Women were not seen except in Eights Week. Oxford was still essentially a market-town surrounded by fields. It was rare for a man to go down for a night during term. The generation after ours cherished closer links with London. Girls drove up; men drove down. Cocktail shakers rattled, gramophones discoursed jazz. The Cowley works enveloped the city. But in my day our lives were bounded by the university. For a brief Indian summer we led lives very much like our fathers'.

In the matter of drink, beer was the staple. I speak of undergraduates of average means. There were a few rich men who drank great quantities of champagne and whisky; a few poor men who were reputed to drink cocoa. The average man, of whom I was one, spent $100 a term and went down $300 in debt. Luncheon was served in our room with jugs of beer. Beer was always drunk in Hall. At my college there was the custom of 'sconcing' when a breach of decorum, such as mentioning a woman's name or quoting from a foreign tongue, was fined for the provision of beer for the table. At one time I used to drink a tankard of beer for breakfast, but I was alone in that. It was drawn and served without demur. The Dean of my college drank very heavily and was often to be seen feeling his way round the quad in his transit from Common Room to his rooms. There were occasions such as bump-suppers and 'smokers' when whole colleges were given up in bacchanalia. In my first year there was a 'freshers' blind' when we all go drunk on wines and spirits and most of us were sick. Some white colonials got obstreperous and the custom was given up. All drinks were procurable at the buttery but the bursar scrutinised our weekly battels and was liable to remonstrate with a man whose consumption seemed excessive. My friends and I had accounts with wine merchants in the town, relying on the buttery for beer and excellent mild claret, which was the normal beverage at club meetings held in undergraduate rooms. No one whom I knew ever had a bottle of gin in his rooms. I remember only one man being sent down from my college for drunkenness and that not his own; late at night he hospitably passed tumblers of whisky out of his ground-floor window to a friend in the lane, who was picked up insensible by the police. I always thought it a harsh sentence. The poor fellow had come three thousand miles from the United States to imbibe European culture.

There were six or seven clubs with their own premises; some, like the Grid, highly respectable; others, Hogarthian drinking dens. The most notable of the dens was named the Hypocrites, in picturesque Tudor rooms over a bicycle shop in St Aldates (now of course demolished). There the most popular drink was red Burgundy drunk from earthenware tankards. A standing house rule was: 'Gentlemen may prance but not dance.' The oddest of these clubs with premises was the New Reform at the corner of the Cornmarket on Ship Street. This was subsidised by Lloyd George in the belief that it would be a nursery for earnest young Liberals. It became a happy centre of anarchy and debauch. Habits of extravagance grew and in my last year we drank a good deal of champagne in mid-morning at the New Reform and scoffed from the windows at the gowned figures hurrying from lecture to lecture. There was a vogue for whisky and crumpets at tea-time in the Union. I think it is no exaggeration to say that, in my last year, I and most of my friends were drunk three or four times a week, quite gravely drunk, sometimes requiring to be undressed and put to bed, but more often clowning exuberantly and, it seemed to us, very funnily. We were never pugnacious or seriously destructive. It took very little to inebriate at that age and high spirits made us behave more flamboyantly than our state of intoxication really warranted. Not many of us have become drunkards.

We were not discriminating. In a novel I once gave a description of two undergraduates sampling a cellar of claret. I never had that experience at that age. Indeed I do not think that at twenty I could distinguish with any certainty between claret and burgundy. Port was another matter. The tradition of port drinking lingered. Many of the colleges had ample bins of fine vintages of which undergraduates were allowed a strictly limited share. Port we drank with reverence and learned to appreciate. The 1904s were then at their prime, or, at any rate, in excellent condition. We were not ashamed (nor am I now) to relish sweet wine. Yquem had, of course, a unique reputation. Starting to drink it in a mood of ostentation, I was led to the other white Bordeaux. Tokay was then procurable and much relished. Bristol Milk and a dark sherry named Brown Bang were also favourites. We tried anything we could lay our hands on, but table-wines were the least of our interests. We drank them conventionally at luncheon and dinner parties but waited eagerly for the heavier and headier concomitants of dessert.

Nowadays, I am told, men privately drink milk and, when they entertain, do so to entice girls. It is tedious for the young to be constantly reminded what much finer fellows their fathers were and what a much more enjoyable time we had. But there you are; we were and we did.

Extract 'Drinking' from The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh (1984)

Alec Waugh: Noble Spirits

...The first duty of wine is to be red. The second is to be a Burgundy...

...I am prepared to believe that a dry martini slightly impairs the palate, but think what it does for the soul...

Alec Waugh, In Praise of Wine and Certain Noble Spirits (1957)

Tea & Wine

Increasingly, in these ominous days, I find immense joy in slight pleasures. The exquisite curve of a hand-rolled lapel. The rich antiquing on a pair of old brogues. The self-annhilating blast of California sun in my face. The endlessly thumping, churning surf, which is almost provocative in its insistence. And the spicy flavours of tea, wine, and tobacco. It is the tang of tea and tobacco to which I am often drawn in the evening. Settling down with a pot of Earl Grey or a glass of chardonnay, or occasionally an Avo robusto, sporting an OCBD, a pair of khakis, and velvet slippers, I muse on the day's proceedings and indulge in cheerfully inane conversation. It may be perceived as a mundane way of being, and perhaps to some—those who rely on unending distraction—it is. But I think it is important to infuse every minute of the day with ritual and order, meaning and significance. It is necessary, I think, to face life in a direct manner, to accept fate on its own terms—and to sip tea while doing so. A life of sublime implication; this is the objective.

Old Wine

"I have found the ideal way to drink Burgundy. You must take a peach and peel it, and put it in a finger bowl, and pour the Burgundy over it. The flavour is exquisite. And the peach seems to exaggerate the happy Seraglio contentedness that old wine evokes..."

Letter, from Alastair Graham to Evelyn Waugh

Various Wines

"I trust that you will forgive my friend. The wines were too various. It was neither the quality nor the quantity that was at fault; it was the mixture. Grasp that and you have the very root of the matter. To understand all is to forgive all."

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh