Bruce Anderson

Wine merchants might just be the happiest people in the world

For each of those I know, their career is a vocation

A delightful girl came to see me this morning. She is helping with the research for a biography of David Cameron. Someone had told her that he was not comfortable in his own skin. There was only one reply to that: balls. I have never known anyone so much at ease with himself.

That discussion made me consider the concept of bien dans sa peau. There was Cardus’s marvellous description of Emmott Robinson: ‘It was as if God had taken a piece of strong Yorkshire clay, moulded it into human form, breathed life into it and said: “Thy name is Emmott Robinson and tha shall open t’ bowling from Pavilion End’’.’ That was clearly a happy man, as long as Yorkshire were winning.

But I decided that the drink trade breeds a more durable contentment, not dependent on the vagaries of the wicket or the umpires. I considered friends and acquaintances who have devoted their working life to selling beverages: Richard Berkley-Matthews, Hew Blair, Ronnie Cox, Cassidy Dart, Andrew Sheepshanks, Andrew Smith, Mark Walford. In every case, their career was a vocation. Like Emmott Robinson, they had been put on earth to do what they wanted to do. ‘I often wonder what the vintners buy/One half as precious as the stuff they sell.’

There is now another name to add to the list. Four years ago, Jasper Morris produced a book, Inside Burgundy, which lives up to its title. As Steven Spurrier writes in the introduction, it has been ‘written by someone who has and does walk the land: you can stand with him, look to your left, spot the dip that was a quarry, note how the slope turns just here towards the morning sun’. But this is not just a peasant’s-eye Burgundy.

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