Port is fashionable once again

I once drank some excellent port at Ted Heath’s table. The invitation came as a surprise, but it almost certainly had nothing to do with the monstre (un)sacré. The dinner took place during a Bournemouth party conference at the Close in Salisbury. Ted had an unofficial PPS, a then Tory MP called Robert Hughes. Rob had a sense of fun and mischief. There would have been little scope for either while he was enduring the sullen maunderings of the Incredible Sulk. Anyway, he was given a chance to amuse himself when asked to organise a dinner party. He included me.

This would not have been Ted’s choice. I had never been polite about him in print, nor to him in person. But he was at one disadvantage. As I was not a head of state or even a head of government, I was hardly an interlocuteur valable for le grand épicier. Although he knew perfectly well who I was, he was not prepared to admit it.

That said, he started the evening with a boundary at my expense. We were admiring the stuff on his walls. There was a photograph of him with the governor of Lee Ho Fook province or some such. It was of great significance because he was prominent. 

Next to it was a delicious Gwen John portrait and I complimented him. ‘That is indeed superb, Ted.’ (He would no doubt have preferred a more honorific mode of address but sod that.) He saw his chance. ‘Ye-es. Those who know about these things saythat it is a fine example of her work.’ Four runs to Heath.

Dinner ensued; pretty good, as I recall, with some decent claret. But the high point was the port, clearly from a serious year. I thought I would risk embarrassment. ‘This is a very fine port you are giving us. Is it a ’55, opening up to full maturity? Or could it be a ’63, replete with promise?’ Ted’s only reply was ‘glass of port’. Maybe I was right – I suspect that it was the ’55 – or perhaps whoever did the buttling just produced some port without the host knowing or caring. That seems unlikely. Ted enjoyed his creature comforts and it is hard to believe that he would have been un-aware of what he was drinking.

He might have wished that he had followed up the Gwen John crack with a borrowing from Wilfred Rhodes, the great Yorkshire bowler who could have joined Ted in an all-time curmudgeon’s eleven. He once dismissed an Oxbridge captain. After the match, the undergraduate congratulated the master. ‘That was a very good ball, Mr Rhodes.’ ‘Aye. It were too good for thee.’

Apropos port, including the tawny variety, there is bad news. Those who market the nectar are managing to increase sales. Hitherto, port has been the prerogative of Oxbridge colleges, Inns of Court, livery companies, London clubs, the odd great house and similar establishments where chaps know what is good for them. The only concession to modernity is that these days, the ladies are not always obliged to retire when the decanters circulate.

Now the young are being encouraged to drink port and even mix it. Doing that to vintage port ought to be a criminal offence, on a par with putting soda in malt whisky. Because of the marketing men, supplies are decreasing. Most of the ’77 port has now been drunk: an outstanding vintage which could have benefited from enhanced longevity. This also means, inevitably, that prices are rising. Not many years ago, in Lisbon, I drank a bottle of 60-year-old tawny for €35. Those were the days.

All that said, summer is not yet over. In the course of the weekend, I drank a lot of Luberon Blanc from the Famille Perrin. The Perrins know how to make wine. Does the English climate still know how to make summer? Let us hope.