Almost 50 years ago, in a hotel bar in central Paris, French wine faced a reckoning. Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant, decided California deserved a spell in the sun: at the time French wine was the dominant force in Europe, with bottles from the New World – Australia, New Zealand, the US and the like – considered their poor cousin. Spurrier came up with the idea to pit the very best French Bordeaux against Californian cabernet sauvignons and chardonnays against white Burgundies, and have a panel of experts – all French – rank them in a blind tasting that came to be known as the Judgment of Paris.
California won both categories. Odette Khan, a well-known critic, reportedly demanded her scorecard back so news of her grave error wouldn’t reach the papers. She was right to be worried: when word got out, the scandal was so great that some of the participants lost their jobs. Aubert de Villaine, the co-owner of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, described it as a ‘kick in the rear for French wine’.
It’s a kick in the rear that has been immortalised over the years on film (in 2008’s Bottle Shock, starring the late Alan Rickman as Spurrier) and in a book by George M. Taber, who reported on the tasting at the time. But the most imposing portrayal of the event is surely ‘After the Upset’, a six- by three-metre canvas reminiscent of Da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ that dominates the atrium of The Vineyard hotel. (It’s accessed by crossing a large glass floor suspended over the white wine cellar below. This isn’t a subtle hotel.)
The piece by London artist Gary Myatt, commissioned by The Vineyard’s former owner, Sir Peter Michael – himself a vintner in California – shows on the critics’ faces embarrassment thinly disguised as outrage. Scorecards flying, glasses scrutinised and tablecloths askew, it captures a moment of madness and incredulity.
Though I must have tasted as least as many wines as they did, my visit to The Vineyard, in Newbury, Berkshire, was rather more sedate. At check-in, I was immediately handed a glass of white wine, a blend of grenache and viognier from the southern Rhône that tasted, in exactly this order, of citrus; cherry blossom; holidays. We may have started off in France, but I was soon led through a long, winding corridor lined with huge, atmospheric black-and-white photographs of Californian vineyards – Sir Peter’s, it turned out. In a matter of metres, I was firmly in Wine Country.
As we neared the rooms, John – the hotel’s host and self-taught art historian – invited me to take part in a guessing game: each room is named after a winemaker, and the decor fits the colour and characteristics of their bottles. I was staying in Domaine Roulot, which I’d never heard of. I guessed red; they do Meursault. John was kind enough to forgive my mistake.
Draining my first glass, I wandered back along to reception, the corridors morphing into an Escher woodcut as I followed signs up and down stairs and along landings that seemingly led nowhere. I didn’t mind. Every flat surface is a gallery here. In the ladies’ – with its padded, patterned walls, like a very beautiful asylum – Grace Kelly peered down at me, regal and pristine in a sketch by Boris Smirnoff. (No relation to the vodka, disappointingly.) At the bar, a gaggle of children caught between pointillism and impressionism giggled in the corner, sharing secrets on a picnic blanket in Philip Wilson Steer’s ‘Chatterboxes’. And how many diners can say they’ve had a meal under the watchful eye of a Degas – or even two?
Over a glass of Armenian voskehat – a bold, intense white that lingered on the tongue – Romain Bourger, the hotel’s director of wine and the UK’s top sommelier last year, explained that while the 15,000 bottles in the cellar championed Californian wine, he sought to give a platform to bottles from lesser-known countries, deepening and challenging guests’ tastes and preconceptions about wine and who gets to make it.
At dinner an Argentinian white was followed by a blanc de noirs from New York; we then flitted between New Zealand, Italy and France before topping off the evening with a Royal Tokaji. The Hungarian wine was liquid sunshine.
But if the wine pairings were worldly, the tasting menu was firmly based in Berkshire. Crunchy pastry cups of cured trout tasted exactly like the best fish and chip batter you’ve ever tried. (I mean this as a huge compliment.) The spring lamb and asparagus were so beautifully presented that I didn’t know whether to eat my food or frame it. Perhaps it was because I was dining with a group of influencers. They were immaculate. Their insistence on getting the perfect shot, however confected, made me self-conscious of the messy way I dipped my bread and slurped down every last drop of my wine. But it was too good for me to care.
Chef Thomas Scade’s plates were a riot of colour. While Heston Blumenthal-esque ‘food as other objects’ trickery can often come off as forced, the replica of a cork that followed the intricate puddings was a genuinely tasty brownie. Although by that point, such was my trust in Scade’s cooking that had he toasted a real cork, plated it and told me to eat it I probably would have, and thanked him for the experience.
Four hours at the table flew by. New World wines more than held their own. Spurrier would have been proud.
Luxury double rooms at The Vineyard start from £295 per night, or £336 with breakfast. Prices at The Tasting Room start from £115 for five courses, with paired wines for an additional £85.
Comments
Comment section temporarily unavailable for maintenance.