Right as rain

‘The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers / Pass me the bottle, old lad, there’s an end of summer.’ The paraphrase was justified, for the weather was doing its best to reinforce Housmanic gloom — although the scene through the windowpanes was best described in Scottish, not Shropshire. There is a Scots word, dreich. It may not be quite onomatopoeic, but roll it round your mouth and you will get the message. We certainly did.

Before us was a sodden lawn festooned with dead leaves. A few weeks ago, they would have been resplendent in dancing verdancy. More recently, it would have been a stately golden brown, the colour of mature Rieussec. They now looked like corpses on a muddy Flanders battlefield, so crushed that it was hard to believe they had ever been alive. This was as dreich as a wet Sunday in Arbroath.

Indoors, all was warmth: the only contact between glass and liquid occurred when the wine was poured. I was helping a friend to assess a couple of bottles, both en magnum. Were they ready? Worse still, were they over-ready? ‘Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,’ wrote poor old Housman. I am sure that even he would not have believed that of wine.

Fortunately, no pessimism was necessary. The 2008 Cissac was in perfect condition, as was the 2007 Perron. It comes from Lalande de Pomerol, a relatively unfashionable area of Bordeaux. It is also overshadowed by Perron la Fleur, which belongs to the Sichels of Palmer and d’Angludet. But it was in excellent shape, with both fruit and structure. There need be no hurry to drink it up. Vaut le detour; if there are any bargains in Bordeaux, Lalande de Pomerol may be the place to look.