In The Drink

An interesting weekend of boats, booze and bibulous dilemmas. Friday afternoon saw us on Cowes’ Royal Yacht Squadron start line for the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s Morgan Cup race to Cherbourg. Friday night saw us creeping through the shipping lanes in thick fog, listening to the lowing horns of the tankers and shortly thereafter – a minute, maybe two? – rolling in their wake. Such situations call for a drink but we kept our nerve (and the ship’s rule of a couple of small glasses with supper and nought else.)

At least until about 9am, - when, with the fog having cleared and
the wind with it - after two or three hours of drifting backwards on
a foul tide away from the finish line the dispirited helmswoman
inquired: “Soooo … that rosé you say you opened by mistake in
the dark last night … any good?” It was a syrah from Fetzer and
it underlined again that what you want on boats, and in the outdoors
generally (and on aeroplanes particularly, but for other reasons) are
big, bold flavours – even the colour is secondary.

The fact is that whether we like it – or know it – or not, at
least half the pleasure of wine is olfactory and if there’s even a
breath of breeze the loveliness gets literally blown away. Forget
drinking your best stuff in the great outdoors unless you can deal
with the problem. The Fetzer fit the bill fine, as did another rosé,
shortly afterwards and purely by way of comparison, from Graves’s
excellent Château de Seuil.

An unusual wine selection quandary arose on Sunday: what bottle to
open after your seasick mast-man has dropped off (firstly, just to
sleep - but then, as a consequence, off the boat), been grappled back
on board, seemed fine, laughed it off then gone into a steep
Mayday-worthy decline and had to be winched off by Solent Coastguard
helicopter? Answer: the nearest.