Ou sont les bouteilles d’antan? With the onset of middle life, a good bottle can take on a melancholy aspect.
Ou sont les bouteilles d’antan? With the onset of middle life, a good bottle can take on a melancholy aspect. The other day, I was lucky enough to be at the drinking of a ’67 Yquem, which I had not tasted for nearly 20 years. Magnificent then, it had lost nothing over the previous decades. It was and remains a celestial harmony of sweetness and structure, like a Greek temple melted down in honey. But I had drunk the previous bottle with Alan Clark. So I retold a few of the best Clark stories and raised a glass to his shade.
Another bottle brought back a similar memory: another drinking companion who has crossed the Styx. In 1977, in the library of the Conservative Research Department, I picked up an insistent telephone.
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