Claret and cricket go together. Not, admittedly, while watching live cricket; then, the drink should be beer. But what about those of us who believe that the second worst affliction in modern cricket — after Twenty20 — is the barmy army? The batsman has played at and missed each of the last three deliveries. The fielders have all closed in, crouching at short piranha. Exuding destruction, the bowler is returning to his mark. The entire ground is silent, and not just in the sense of making no noise. There is an intensity of silence, all of it piled on the batsman’s shoulders. That was one of life’s great experiences. Now — Lord’s largely excepted — it has been replaced by constant football chanting.
This also stifles the brilliant heckle. Hutton, batting at Headingley, is hit on the box by Lindwall. Hardly surprisingly, he limps towards square leg, massaging the stricken region. A voice from the cheap end calls him to order: ‘Stop pleasuring thyself, ’utton, and get on wi’ game.’ The barmy army’s worst offenders should be whipped from Headingley to Old Trafford. But until that curative medicine is applied, many of the rest of us are forced into television spectatorship.
There is a consolation. A savour of good claret is a fine accompaniment to a perfect cover drive, and the two sports are not just linked by taste and aesthetics. There is also arithmetic: in cricket, averages; in claret, vintages.
In Burgundy, it is necessary to know about growers and négociants. Even with the improved viniculture of recent decades, there is much more variation. A 2002 Aloxe-Corton: it will not be cheap and it should be good, but who made it? By contrast, Bordeaux is a statistician’s delight.
Yet the figures can never tell the whole story. Memories and the minds of men cannot be fully captured by mere notation. Although we know that Lohmann and Richardson terrorised the batsmen of the late 1880s and early 1890s, how would they compare to Lillee and Ambrose? Were the finest pre-phylloxera clarets really a class above the best ’45s, ’61s or ’70s? Equally, the great postwar years were lauded and garlanded all the way from the en primeur prices to their later and hideously expensive appearances in the auction rooms. Even so, were they that much better than some of the supposedly lesser years?
The response to 1961 was not just praise: it was apotheosis. But what about the ’62s and the ’64s? Over the years, for obvious reasons, I have drunk far more of them than of the ’61s and rarely been disappointed. The other month, a friend opened his last magnum of Ducru-Beaucaillou ’64. We agreed that it was thinking about meandering towards the gentle downhill path from the sunlit uplands of maturity. Even so, it was a delicious, harmonious, classic claret. Clive Cowen, a friend of mine who serves on the same wine committee, and who is sardonically sceptical about any hint of jargon, also has a term of praise which has caught on among his acquaintances: ‘ToC’ — tastes of claret. That ’64 was ToC in excelsis.
There is plenty of ToC to be found among the ’94s and 2004s, both overshadowed years. Although they may not last as long as the ’62s and ‘64s, there are a lot of serious bottles. It is also worth keeping an eye on Robert Parker’s dislikes. He is the most influential wine commentator of all time, whose assessments always move the markets. But his taste buds tend to genuflect in front of power and fruit. Both are essential, yet those of us who are more at ease on the left bank of the Gironde, preferring gravel and minerality, wishing to ensure that our grape juice is well-laced with tannin, may not find him the best vade-mecum. One should not necessarily be deterred by a tepid review from Mr Parker. After all, with the wines that he exalts, it is more a case of TtC: taken to China.
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