Clarkson on Cars (11 page)

She takes her argument a stage further by suggesting that,‘Before the war, sweet wines were very popular but ten years ago, Barsac and indeed its near neighbour, Sauternes, were rejected or, at best, merely served as dessert wines.

‘One only has to talk to people in the trade and read about the trends with Barsac to realise that it is finding favour once more,’ she added.

Her views are echoed by Cyril Ray in his
Book of Wine
where he says, ‘There used to be a silly, snobbish prejudice against sweet wines but people who know and make them, know better.’

He then goes into a state of virtual apoplexy while describing how delicious a glass of Barsac is when served with a bowl of raspberries. Other books on the subject accuse you and I of being ‘silly snobs’ and cite Barsac as an ideal wine to serve, not only with fresh raspberries, but also as an aperitif, as a cocktail base, with cheese and with fish but only, for some reason, if it’s in sauce.

In furtherance of this article, you understand, I tried Barsac with a boil-in-the-bag halibut and parsley sauce the other day and it still tasted nasty. It was marginally better with my Dairylea but I wasn’t prepared to use my £8 bottle as a cocktail base to experiment in that direction and I shall reserve judgement on the raspberry combination until such fruit is in season.

Experts also claim the wine is particularly outstanding when drunk alongside
pâté de foie gras
. It isn’t.

In fairness though, I tend to get very cross with people when I tell them how marvellous the Peugeot 205 GTi is and they disagree, saying its wing mirrors are the wrong shape.

Doubtless, a wine connoisseur would stick his nose in the air just as though he’d encountered a bottle of ‘Château Sans Jambes’ if I fatuously declared that Barsac is awful because it’s sweet.

Perhaps it’s the Bristol of the wine world. Expensive, odd, rare and appreciated only by a few weirdos – sorry, enthusiasts. I needed to find out – hence my expert knowledge on this 15 October business.

You see, Barsac isn’t your average wine that just happens to find favour among those blessed with noses and palates more sensitive than Ian Botham on the cocaine issue.

Over half the grapes are discarded if they do not meet the standards laid down by their almost ridiculously picky château
propriétaires
who zealously guard their reputations and, to a lesser extent, their status as second-, or in some cases, first-growth vineyards.

In the Barsac region, the grapes have to be more than just ripe in order to meet these standards. One has to wait for them to have reached an advanced stage of maturity and for them to have been attacked by a minute fungoid growth with a complicated Latin name that has, thankfully, become known as Noble Rot.

Unique in the world to the Sauterne/Barsac region, this mushroom-like fungus would normally be considered a pest, but it is essential in the production of great sweet wine.

As this murdering mushroom wreaks havoc on the poor defenceless fruit, the grape begins to shrivel, thus losing in volume but gaining all the while in sugar content.

But, the plot thickens. The maniacal mushroom will only flourish if, at harvest time (15 October), there is a soupçon of moisture and plenty of sunshine. It seems to like climatic changes – so why on earth does it choose to live in Bordeaux and not Rochdale?

Back to the plot: if it rains at all during harvesting and the warring grape and mushroom are subject to heavy moisture rather than just the right amounts contained in fog, the dreaded and utterly invincible Vulgar Rot moves in and any aspirations for a vintage Barsac are lost.

Evidently, the noble mushroom is a choosy little blighter which won’t do as it’s supposed to on every piece of fruit. This accounts for the huge wastage a Barsac winegrower has to endure. Such high standards are simply not found anywhere else but they’ve helped Barsac to a reputation as a region where quality is paramount and quantity is a dirtier word than Frascati.

In pursuance of this quality tag, the Barsac boys widen their individualistic streak still further when it comes to harvesting. Most vineyards send out waves of
camionettes
during October to round up the great unwashed who are then drafted in for picking.

But in Barsac such blanket measures are avoided. Eager children are told exactly what a grape suffering from Noble Rot looks like before they are sent among the vines.

If there are insufficient children around, help is sought from the more intelligent Spaniards who flock across the Pyrenees to help out.

Whereas an average vineyard probably gets its harvesting over and done with in one fell swoop, the eager children and intelligent Spaniards are sent out day after day looking for precisely the right quality of grape which must be picked at exactly the right time. It sounds like a dodgy business to me.

In 1971, it seems the château
propriétaires
were blessed with the right combination of fog, sun and Spanish MENSA candidates because experts claim that was Barsac’s best ever year.

However, it isn’t just the Noble Rot, the climate and the correct time of picking that count toward perfection. As any local down there will tell you, the soil upon which the vineyards rest is paramount too. Any deeper and apparently the wine would be too vigorous. Any more clay and it would presumably taste like a potter’s wheel.

When the harvest is gathered in, the wine undergoes a procedure familiar to any amateur enthusiast. The grapes are crushed very slowly a few times and the resultant slush is allowed to ferment for three or so weeks in barrels made from new oak. Flavour from the wood seeps into the wine and compensates for the lack of tannin given out by the skins which are removed in the production of white wine. After this period is over, locals claim they can tell whether they have a vintage on their hands or not.

When the wine’s alcohol content reaches 14.5 per cent, the wine makers decide if fermentation should be stopped and small quantities of sulphur dioxide are added to stop the yeast’s activity on the wine – whatever it may be.

Bottling takes place when the wine has been in the casket for three years but in order that it should reach its peak of fitness, you should wait until its tenth birthday before imbibing.

An interesting(?) little booklet called
The Sweet Wines of Bordeaux
says that by this time, its‘oily characteristics, breeding and body should be most evident’. But, it goes on to add that if you decide to hang on, it is vital to check the cork every 20 years. Quite frankly, I have more important things on my mind than remembering to check my corks.

And where pray, in the middle of London, am I to find a place that meets the apparently critical storage conditions set out by the booklet: a cool dark place away from noise, vibration and smell where the bottles can be laid horizontally?

So there you have it. Barsac. A fussy little wine made from grapes, a fungoid growth, sulphur dioxide and essence of oak tree.

No wonder it’s supposed to taste so good alongside a pâté that is produced by corking a goose’s bottom and force feeding it with grain until its liver is about to explode.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I did not understand what it is about a ball that people find so fascinating.

Every Saturday in the winter, thousands and thousands of people turn out to watch men in little shorts playing football, a game that is not exciting. In the summer, many tens of people watch cricket, which is not only unexciting but terribly confusing as well.

I have never played cricket; at school, however, I spent two afternoons every week playing football because it was the law. Only once did I manage to score a goal and that was only because their goalkeeper, a chap after my own heart, had wandered off to talk to his girlfriend.

I have spent ten years trying to fathom out the reason why people watch sport and I think I now have the answer. They would like to be doing what the people they’re watching are doing. People who go to football matches would like to think they could have been good enough to play professionally.

The reason I won’t go is because I know for a fact that I could never have done it, even on an amateur basis. Octopi and football do not happy bedfellows make.

At last however, I have found a derivation of football that I do want to play and that I therefore would go and watch regularly if it were played here.

It’s called
autofussball
and it’s a cross between figure-of-eight stock-car racing, football and Thai boxing. The first thing you need is a pitch which can be of any size and of any surface. Any old car park will do. A stubble field would be even better.

The second thing you need are some old cars. My recommendation is to go for something large with a small engine mounted some considerable distance from the inner wings. A Ford Zephyr? The third thing you need is a 3-foot-diameter, fluorescent ball. And the fourth thing you need is some team-mates, who can come from any walk of life, though I would recommend you find people who walk up and down Oxford Street wearing a sandwich board, talking at length about how they’ve made a spaceship out of lavatory paper.

There are only two complicated rules. If you touch the ball with your hand, your opponents are allowed to take a penalty which they will miss because it is damnably hard.

The ball is placed 20 feet in front of the goal and the car must be raced at it backwards. Just before impact, the car must execute a J-turn, swiping the ball with its front wing as it spins and, hopefully, getting it in between the posts.

It never happens like that, so touching the ball with your hand is just fine.

The other rule is that defence of the goal-mouth is only permitted if an attacker is within 20 feet and in possession of the ball. If you use your car to block the goal when the attacker is outside the 20-foot marker, he is entitled to take a penalty which he will miss. Blocking the goal, therefore, is always worthwhile.

The only other thing to remember is that you will not be driving home in the car you use to play.

Now, this game is not some kind of fanciful figment of my imagination. I saw it being played in Stuttgart and I have never enjoyed being a spectator so much.

To prepare the cars, steel plates are welded to the bumpers and the windows are kicked out. The drivers do not wear crash helmets or seatbelts. When asked why, they spoke in German about their Andrex Apollos.

At face value, it looked like the red team, with their brace of Opel Asconas and a VW Beetle complete with a stoved-in bonnet for carrying the ball, had to be deemed hot favourites. The white team, believing nimbleness counted for more than strength, had rolled up with an Audi 50, a Renault 5 that wouldn’t start and a Nova.

Things looked even more gloomy after five minutes when one of the red Asconas expired and was replaced by a massive Granada estate.

And I must confess that I felt the white team had had it when the Renault, having been bumped into life, coughed up blood the first time it went near the ball and retired.

But I was reckoning without the genius of the Audi driver who, single-handedly, scored sixteen goals before the Granada completely removed just about all its vital organs, by which I mean its engine, transmission and both front wheels.

The Granada, after this savagery, was then accidentally rammed and destroyed by the Beetle which suffered almost no damage whatsoever. Indeed, some fifteen minutes before the final whistle was due, it was the only car left running. That made life really rather easy for its driver who drifted back and forth scoring a goal every 30 seconds or so.

Now remember, this is the Germans I’m talking about here, a race that has almost no sense of humour, a race I can best sum up by the response of a girl in the Avis hire-car centre who was trying to sell me the idea of an Audi 80.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘my briefcase has more space in it than an Audi 80.’

She studied my briefcase for a while before saying, ‘No. It hasn’t.’

Imagine, therefore, what could become of
autofussball
if it could be developed by the race that brought you the hovercraft and afternoon tea. Imagine, too, if Murray Walker were allowed to commentate.

I am having to practise the art of being boring. I have not been in the pub for a week, I care more for the well-being of my Royal Worcester collection than I do my Alfa and I am now an expert on the subject of vacuum cleaners.

Four inches have been hacked from my hair and when I went shopping for clothes the other day, it was to Hacketts and not Jean Machine.

Good Lord, as I write it is 2 p.m. on a Sunday, a time when normally I’d be in the White Horse, discussing the week’s deals and conquests.

But no more. In exactly thirteen days’ time, I will be standing at the top of an aisle promising all sorts of things to Beloved and listening to a man with his shirt on back to front talking about how marriage is an honourable institution.

From that moment on, I will be dull. I may even grow a beard.

The last few months have been hell on earth. Family feuds have been commonplace, the caterer said she wouldn’t do asparagus rolls, the vicar said his church wouldn’t accommodate the 230 people we invited, folk who hadn’t been asked but thought they should have been are now ignoring me, and the whole engagement foundered on rocky ground when Beloved said she wanted the wedding list to be at GTC and I wanted it at HR Owen.

Then there was the marquee which was initially ordered with a brown lining, and the honeymoon which couldn’t be spent in Thailand because of the weather, the Maldives because of political unrest, Tahiti because it’s too far away, Africa because it’s full of creepie-crawlies, Europe because it’s awash with journalists on car launches or America because it’s full of Americans.

But the worst bit of it all was getting the right cars for the right bits in the wedding ceremony.

This little job was entrusted to me. Any car in the world is just a phone call away, they said.

Wrong. The man at Bentley trotted out a ridiculous excuse which, when decoded, spelt out a message indicating that I should go forth and do what I will be spending my honeymoon doing anyway.