The Life and Wines of Hugh Johnson by Simon McMurtrie & Hermione Ireland

Author:Simon McMurtrie & Hermione Ireland [Simon McMurtrie and Hermione Ireland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Académie du Vin Library Ltd
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Château Latour

My business with Bordeaux had always been on the consuming end. I was well acquainted with some friends’ châteaux and had been a happy guest in many. But it came as a total surprise when in 1986 Alan Hare, the President of Château Latour (and chairman of the Financial Times), invited me to lunch at his club, the loftiest in the St James’s Street firmament, and invited me to join the Latour board.

The Coffee Room at White’s was a cross between a ballroom and a school dining hall. The chandeliers, portraits and plasterwork, the tall windows looking down on St James’s, are 18th-century London at its most elegant. The food, ordered by filling in a chit and brought by a wholesome matron, had a grown-up school air about it. Alan was always smiling, a slightly hesitant, most gentle man. I had a strong sense of déjà vu as he reached with the decanter over the shining mahogany to fill my glass. His brother, Lord Blakenham, had invited me 10 years earlier in that same room to become involved with the Royal Horticultural Society’s Journal. ‘Not technical stuff,’ said Alan, ‘but we’d like another point of view, and I think you’ll find it interesting.’

A day’s work for a member of the Château Latour board (this was in its years as an English outpost before a stricter French regime took over) started with a visit to the chais. The first-year chai first, where the wine of the latest vintage was still in active preparation, its barrels stopped only with a heavy glass bung to allow the maître de chai to make his inspections. Twelve hundred barrels lie perfectly aligned in six ranks, all the pale colour of new oak (the colour of Bordeaux stone, too) with their central panel, between dark protective bands of chestnut, stained claret red. It is the dress code of the Médoc; smarter than random red splashes. A cellar-hand in blue overalls is doing his rounds, using a can with a long spout to top up each barrel to the brim.

Ouillage (ullage in English) is a constant task as the wine evaporates and the oak absorbs it. The maître de chai leads the way, thief in hand (the thief is a short glass pipette; he plunges it into the heart of a barrel to draw a sample. One thief-full will put samples into three glasses). We follow, five of us, and concentrate fiercely on each dark-red drop: too cold, too dumb, too tannic to taste like wine. The maître knows where each barrel comes from: which part of the vineyard, Cabernet or Merlot, the age of the vines, and its chances of becoming a Grand Vin or second wine, Les Forts de Latour, or even third, the wine sold simply as Pauillac.

It takes a sample or two, teeth-achingly cold, painfully masticated, to start distinguishing riper from less ripe, more fleshy from tighter knit, short and abrupt in flavour from sweetly clinging. The wines from the Grand Vin barrels are a more imperious purple.

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