What's New Around Town
"The Rambler" is always on the lookout for that new trend or clever idea which helps to make life easier and brighter. If you want further details about any of the items mentioned, write to him, ℅ The Editor, MEN ONLY, Tower House, Southampton Street, London W.C.2. But please do not send money to "The Rambler" except in those particular cases when he expressly invites you to do so.
By "The Rambler"
Good Grape Picking. - It saves you money and adds to your enjoyment of a wine if you can use the vintage date to pick out just the character and quality of the one you want, whether you are ordering it with a meal or putting down a little personal stock. You can do this with reasonable certainty without years of swotting, providing you have room in your waistcoat pocket for a neat three-inch circle of thin card, which is issued by a leading wine importer. Two indicator-cards are fitted within this circle, and a quick flick of the finger tells you at a glance what you want to know. Thus, with the first random shot I confirmed that in 1953 the average Burgundy was soft in nature - a quick-maturing type - and of good quality. It will make splendid drinking, now and for some time yet. I turned the card over and flipped again, to note that the 1949 Hock is of generous, "fruity" character and excellent in its quality. Looking for a Hock of a more balanced and elegant type, I found a good quality within seconds, the 1955 vintage. Turning the card again, I put myself in the position of a chap looking for a nice Claret which would be a good one to keep as well as being currently enjoyable. And again, in a moment or two, I found myself choosing between the good, well-balanced 1952 and the rather richer and better 1945. The dial also takes in Champagnes and Ports. Anyway, knowing your interest in such matters I have ear-marked on your behalf, from the wine house concerned, a good number of free copies of this useful gadget. Let me know if you'd like one.
Wineograph. - We wine-lovers are certainly being well looked after these days, for here's yet another aid to good drinking called the "Wineograph" Chart. Printed in two colours on ruled paper, this is a most thorough and fool-proof guide, a real What's What About Wine - by S.P.E. Simon and S.F. Hallgarten. Given the type and price and what it's to go with, you can't fail to choose the exactly appropriate bottle. But you can also work the other way round - starting, for instance, with the food or occasion and working back to the prices of the various wines most suitable. Or you can follow up a favourite vintage and discover the best circumstances in which to drink it. In fact, when you've learnt your way about the Wineograph, you will know all the answers and your wine merchant will be delighted to do business with such a knowledgeable chap. He'll be quite pleased with himself, too, probably, for as likely as not he sold you your "Wineograph" (price 1s.) in the first place. So if you want one, try your wine merchant first. If he can't help, try me . . . but when you're sending that 1s. postal order, please leave it blank (i.e. don't make it payable to MEN ONLY or "The Rambler").
Your Newpaper. - From a well-known wine merchant I have received a most interesting little newspaper entitled News from Bordeaux. For anyone interested in wine drinking this will certainly have a great appeal. Subjects discussed include dieting through wine, recipes for cooking fish with Bordeaux wines, and the art of wine tasting. I have been promised a number of copies for readers who are interested but the supply will not be unlimited and applications should be made early.
Home Comforts. - A new product, the first beer in Britain brewed and packaged especially for home use, will certainly be of interest. First and most important detail, this is a beer which is good in itself, irrespective of the pack. It has something of what I would call an "export" flavour, which will widen its popularity further. The pack is good too, and will solve many problems of supply, storage, bottle-returning, and the like. There are no "empties" in the accepted sense. This beer in packed in flat-top cans - of normal grocery-basket type - and is thus handy both in stocking up and in larder-shelf storing. It will keep in first-class condition for months. There are two sizes, an 8-oz., half-pint size, at 1s. 5d., and the 12-oz., two-glass size, at 2s. 2d. A special lining to the can ensures that a good beer gets to you - or to your unexpected quests - in perfect condition. This new beer is brewed especially for canning, at a new brewery in Scotland. Details on request.
Long Drink. - There has been a recent popularising of a very lively custom which certainly flourished in Viking days, as also at various periods from the Middle Ages to around the time of our own grandfathers; namely, the drinking of ale-by-the-yard. A "yard," as its name implies, is a craftily-fashioned glass drinking vessel 36" from tip to base. For manageability and easy drinking-flow it is very slim and slender for most of its length, with most of the beer content carried in a kind of large thermometer-bulb at the bottom end. To make its appearance quite clear, imagine a yard-long, graceful trumpet of glass, sprouting from a globe of, say, large cricket-ball size - or small football, if you want that much. The "yards" come in various capacities. The traditional one holds 2 1/2 pints, and the record for emptying one of these is held by a welder in Redditch, at 10 seconds! Then there's a handier 1-pint size; a 1/2-pint; a dainty "one-sixth"; and a miniature which is more for collecting than as a serious drinking-tool. I expect many readers will be glad to know that these "yards" are being made again - they are hand-made, too, and blown by craftsmen. Details on request.
Wider Uses. - People are too apt to look upon brandy as being rather a specialist drink, mainly desirable for rounding-off meals. Yet it's much more versatile. I am reminded of this fact by seeing that one of the brandy houses recently had occasion to assemble some of the more interesting cocktails and drink recipes which include brandy in their make-up: the noggs, cobblers, fixes, sours, specials, flips, highballs, slings, and the like. I took the opportunity to record the recipes and can arrange for a copy to be sent to anybody who is interested in trying some additional ways of enjoying brandy.
A Dream of Wine Galore
By H. Warner Allen
But duty-free wine is a pipe-dream, beautiful as the oysters Saki said were more beautiful than any religion. Blue moons and months of Sundays are more probable. Yet, supposing for a moment that the brewer's beautiful dream came true, in spite of the impassable barrier of Exchequer and vested interests, would a little competition be bad for tied houses which sometimes, I fear, peddle what in my youth would have been called swipes for schoolboys? There might come floods of nondescript Midi wines, to be blended with Algerian and a strong dark common Spanish wine into that by no means despicable beverage pinard - thanks to which the French survived the first world war. We might learn to overcome our prejudice against diluting wine, and water it down a little as a thirst-quencher, though i must admit that I never added a drop of water to the many litres of pinard I drank between 1914 and 1918. It would make no demands on the palate, but it would at least lay a foundation. The palate could later be trained to discriminate the common-or-garden from wines of higher degree.
There is no great surplus of wine for export in Italy; and Chianti, Barolo, and the rest would continue to attract those wise epicures who like pasta and olive oil. Germany again has very little wine looking for a foreign market, and Hocks and Moselles would remain very much as they are, though Steinwein, if prices fell, would appeal to the national taste for a wine into which one can get one's teeth. Spain and Portugal are not at present even involved in what I call this "dream of wine galore," but if they were, Sherry and Port would still hold their own against any competition, because they are wines that cannot be imitated but only caricatured; and the Portuguese table wines, still something of a novelty, coming over here with the guarantee that only a guaranteed locality can give, would find a wonderful market.
With such an embarrass de richesse the value of a discriminating taste to distinguish between the ordinary, the good, and the best, would be enormously increased. As things are, the unique fascination of wine is being more and more appreciated, and if only it ceased to be a luxury instead of "a good familiar creature," the order of British wine-drinkers would be multiplied a hundredfold. Such a consummation seems a good deal farther away than the invasion of the planets by platoons of earth-born scientists - but, treating it as a possibility, the same counsel holds good for the novice in wine-drinking whether of today or tomorrow: find a wise wine merchant of the old school to educate your palate.
Answers to Wine Problems
A: Big dessert grapes contain too much water to make a wine worth drinking. The good wine grape is always small, and an exact record of the colour and size of selected wine grapes as well as of the colour of the wines made from them, registered by the latest processes of colour photography, is to be found in The Noble Grapes and the Great Wines of France, by André L. Simon, with 24 colour photographs by Percy Hennell, recently published by the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company at the price of five guineas.
A: You cannot do better than follow the recipe given in the Concise Encyclopaedia of Gastronomy: - "To 1 quart of strong hot ale add the pulp of 6 roasted apples, together with a small quantity of grated nutmeg and ginger, with a sufficient quantity of raw sugar to sweeten it. Stir the mixture assiduously and let it be served piping hot." The brown West Indian cane sugar, not coloured beet, is what is needed; and constant tasting should supplement the stirring. For the beer I should advise consulting the local brewer and asking him for his strongest brew. The result should put the clock back three hundred years and call up the picture of Pepys on the night of 9th November, 1666, two months after the Great Fire: "Cards till two in the morning drinking Lamb's Wool."
A: There are two types of Madeira - aperitifs such as Special and dessert wines like Bual, Verdelho, Malmsey. The story goes that in the fifteenth century, a forest fire raged on the island for seven years. The resultant ash is said to account, even today, for the unusual flavour of the grapes. Whatever the reason, Madeira gives us some most distinguished wines.
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