A taste of heaven

I have drunk the Hallelujah Chorus. It was in Cambridge, circa 1970. I was walking back to College, past the 1950s extension to the University Arms hotel, a work of striking ugliness, even by the standards of postwar Cambridge architecture. Like Handel, I felt the heavens open, but not to see the face of God: merely the successor to Noah’s Flood. I fled into the hotel. It was divine providence.

Waiting for the heavens to close, I nursed a pint of pasteurised gas. This was in the days before Camra, the campaign for real ale. Over the past 40 years, the culture wars have gone badly for conservatism. But there is an exception: proper beer. There is also an irony. One of Camra’s early leaders was Roger Protz, a Trotskyite. One is glad that he escaped the ice-pick.

Anyway, the rain pissing down, a dreadful pint of beer: I opened the wine list for something to do. Hallelujah: the heavens shone forth. It was offering 1945 Lafite and Latour for seven pounds ten shillings each. In those days, £15 was a lot of money for an undergraduate, but even then, it was an unmissable opportunity. An oenophile friend and I treated ourselves to a bottle of each. They were magnificent. Pile on the superlatives past the point of absurdity and you have still not reached the start line. It was like a mystic fusion with mountainous grandeur while listening to the Messiah as an aperitif, followed by the B Minor. I wish that I had made a full note. I might have been more solicitous of posterity, had I known that this was probably the greatest evening’s drinking I would ever experience.

A couple of weeks later, we were back for more.