Drink: the romance of fall

The fall: one of the few instances where American English is superior to English English. ‘Autumn’ has a comfortable charm, but ‘fall’ captures the pathos of evanescence. This might seem curious, for in New England the fall is grandiloquent. Nature is rarely so glorious, so defiant. In Glen Lyon last week, there was more of a sense of fall. When the sun shone, the greens and yellows and browns still danced: mid-autumn spring. Outside my bedroom window there was a rowan tree, with an exuberance of blood-red berries. Yet there was an aura of transience — the natural world falling gently into winter’s grasp — and the hills were swathed in mist. In a few weeks, the Glen will be ice and bleak midwinter.

Our party had come to shoot stags. Apropos of glory and defiance, a hillside full of roaring stags is hard to surpass. But we killed in comfort. A well-run Highland lodge is a fine place for chateau generalship. Lying in a huge old-fashioned bath, up to one’s face mask in peaty water, a glass of peaty whisky close at hand: there are worse billets. The cellar was endowed with the mellow fruitfulness of previous autumns. We ate and drank well. Liz’s venison Wellington was a three-rosette dish: Simon Bize’s burgundies a superb accompaniment. 2005 is a great Burgundian vintage. The Bize ’05 Bourgogne rouge: I have drunk premier crus which were lesser wines, and the Savigny-les-Beaune is coming along magnificently. I remember hailing Natalie Tollot’s 2005 Savigny as the best I had ever drunk. Now, I am less sure.

As Natalie demonstrates, girls make excellent vignerons. They are also good with a rifle. Deer-stalking is a stressful business. You can pursue a stag all day before finally getting a shot.