Drink: Mature consideration

It started with a ’99 Margaux, which commanded general agreement from the Brits around the table. Nose, length, balance, harmony: all delectable. It was a velvety, feminine wine, full of promise. Even so, the home team concluded, it was not really ready. The Frenchman in our company could not have disagreed more. ‘You English — you are a nation of necrophiliacs. This wine is excellent; how could you say that it isn’t ready?’ I gave battle. As the fruit and the tannins had not fully come together, we were only drinking 70 per cent of the wine. Give it another three or five years, and they would make love in an ecstatic consummation.

The Grenouille shook his head. ‘Pauvres Rosbifs; you come from the cold North and you can never escape it. You don’t know how to enjoy yourselves. You think you like wine, but you make it an arid subject surrounded by technicalities. You turn the joys of the sun and the South into a Presbyterian religion. Read Ronsard; learn to embrace the pleasures of the day. Five years: we might all be dead.’ At that moment, an enchanting young girl glided by, shyly — and slyly? — aware that she was the cynosure of every eye. Una donna a quindici anni — she cannot have been much older — making us all wish that we could reconnect with our inner 17-year-old. As she evanesced out of earshot, the Frenchman warmed to his theme. ‘I suppose you think that no one should take her to bed until she’s 60?’ ‘I’d settle for a three-year delay,’ said one of our number who announced himself as the Faun’s father. ‘But I doubt I’ll get it. Her current boyfriend’s a lecherous young dog if ever I saw one.’