Lunch, Dinner, Lunch

Thirty years is an awfully long time to have known somebody, yet I have known my friend James for that long; we met through the wine trade and became friends along the way. We've kept in touch over the years, done a little bit of business and had the occasional super lunch (with plenty of lubrication, thank you!). It's always a pleasure to see him, whatever the circumstances, and we seem to manage to get together every few months for a catch-up.

This is precisely what we did when I visited him at his home/office in south London for a chat, a spot of lunch and a glass or two of wine to lubricate the throat and aid the digestion. The lunch was tasty and simple - bit of salad and prawns as a starter, a nicely grilled piece of meat, veg and potatoes as a main course - but the wine was not. We kicked off with a superb Sancerre 2015 (Terre de Maimbray, Pascal et Nicolas Reverdy), subtle, rich and complex Sauvignon Blanc at its best, a far cry from the screaming obviousness of New Zealand examples, so enjoyable! This we made short work of, so James was forced to bring out reinforcements in the shape of a lovely Roero Arneis 2015 just to get us through the prawny bits, and very nice it was too, as difficult as it was to follow that Sancerre. Then we had some claret from a difficult vintage (Grand Puy Lacoste 2007), and I was amazed and impressed - it was a textbook example of fine red Bordeaux wine, modern with everything in the right place and balanced, juicy and luscious, not over the top, a very classy wine.

This, together with our catching up, was the high point of this simple, excellent lunch, and of an afternoon memorable for its subtle quality and real amity. Unfortunately I had to rush off to a meeting late in the afternoon miles away in Kilburn and so bring this extremely pleasant visit to a premature end. Ah, to leave such a relaxed, convivial meeting in order for me to scurry across London, on and off trains like a madman, terribly sad but pre-arranged and necessary - no sudden illness for me there!  And, in case you're wondering, I did get some funny looks when I arrived for my meeting, red-faced and smelling like a winery, though nothing much was said at the time; raised eyebrows said it all.

Every two or three months I meet up with a couple of friends (A and D, to preserve their anonymity) for dinner at selected restaurants. The restaurants are selected only if they allow BYO (bring your own wine), are reasonably priced and serve interesting food; so far we have eaten in various mainly small, independent places, and on a Friday evening late in March we did just that. Both A and D have decent wine cellars, so bring interesting bottles, while impecunious little I bring whatever I can scrounge or the odd half-bottle of sweet wine, something inexpensive but good, if possible.

This time we arranged to meet at a Persian restaurant in Olympia called Mohsen, a few blocks north of Earls Court tube station, a simple place with tasty food but no pretensions or at least none that were apparent to me. There is a tandoor oven by the entrance and their bread, like most similar establishments, are freshly made and delicious. The Persian restaurants that I have tried also have another strength, and that is their ability to have their grilled meat remain succulent and juicy, though this is slightly negated in my eyes by their insistence on serving lots of rice with everything. Their rice is fragrant and nicely cooked, but a bit boring; let's face it, its real use is when you have dishes

with nice rich sauces, as in Indian cuisine, and rice is their to collect and solidify... What can I say, I'm a potato man, especially with grilled meat, and lots of vegetables thrown in for good measure...
The food on the night was pleasant and tasty, if unremarkable, the bread yummy! My friends having raided their cellars came up with several red wines, one of which was a rare Moldovan red of considerable age, alas not in good shape; we ended up with a perfectly decent, balanced Chateau Haut-Marbuzet 1995 from St. Estephe, Bordeaux, past its best but drinking nicely though fading, and a voluptuous, spicy Saint Joseph Offerus 2008 from Chave, perhaps more suited to the style of food than the claret. We ordered a tiny bit of dessert to cleanse the palate, with the little syrupy pastries being pleasant but the ice cream indifferent, and had my wine (1/2 bottle of Waitrose finest Sauternes 2010) which was delightful, fine Sauternes from a good vintage at a very reasonable price! And fine Sauternes is great stuff, luscious and complex, full of ripe white fruit, honeyed and complex, long and compelling, a lovely mouthful always worth tasting. Needless to say that we wandered off down to the tube station in fine spirits, replete with good wine, decent food, good conversation and looking forward to the next time.

The last interesting meal I had was a few days ago, when I met my friend Lance for a quiet lunch - and a long overdue catch-up - at a restaurant he supplies in Soho called Vinoteca, part of a small chain with simple, tasty food and interesting wines. We both had sherry as an aperitif, and mine was a delicious Amontillado, nutty brown in colour, nose and palate (toasted hazelnut?), bone dry with a whiff of richness, complex and long. We then shared a young Chorey-les-Beaune red Burgundy from the 2015 vintage, which was all you would expect: vibrant red fruit, soft and juicy, clean and relatively simple to drink, but satisfying. Burgundy is my favourite wine producing region and at its best produces incomparably majestic red and white wines, complex masterpieces to be savoured when you come across them. It is not an easy area to buy wine from, and fine examples often come with eye-watering price tags, but good advice (trust your wine merchant!) will eventually pay dividends, as will buying relatively early. Of course I cannot afford to buy any fine Burgundy at present, nor any other fine wine, but hopefully this may change in the near future - until then I will continue to rely on my friends and their kindness and generosity.

 All good things come to an end, and both Lance and I had to hurry off to do other things after an invigorating cup of coffee; Lance to a meeting, hopefully to sell more wine, I to write up my adventures, in wine and otherwise, for my discerning if currently limited public!