I used to plan solo trips through France, Spain and Italy to pass through or stay in wine-growing areas, making notes on the growing of vines, their grapes and the results of vinification methods. My notes were to help me eventually establish a vineyard in England.
To eat I would buy a drink at a well-established café and ask the waiter to where he would take his family out for a meal. It was a great way to discover sometimes unmarked establishments that might not have a menu or even cost of dishes displayed. But they would invariably be excellent and modestly priced.
One meal started with a dozen oysters, another with cauliflower, garlic and toasted breadcrumbs. Yet another set out with some raw baby artichokes, which I had no idea about how to tackle. I still wouldn't. And so on.
I now find the ordinary wines of Bordeaux to be disappointing. It is extraordinary how the same area can produce among the finest wines in the world (at a price) and also some of the dullest. But I was there in happier times and took up residence in Bas Médoc (now just Médoc). My room was a hut at the edge of woodland, and when asking where I might find 'le toilette', was directed in the general direction of the trees. The establishment actually did have such a facility, but it was, shall we say, nasty.
Food of a good simple kind was available, but only if either the mother or daughter of the establishment were not occupied with more carnal skills. The house red wine (practically no white was made in the region at this time) was delicious. It came from the co-operative in Prignac. I went to investigate to find a winery thick with fruit flies. But I ordered a hogshead to be shipped to London, where we bottled it and drank a red that coloured the mouth and tongue a bright purple colour. It was delicious. To import a hogshead of wine from France in those days was comparatively easy, but not a bone. Having enjoyed a wonderful rib of beef in a railway station café I asked if I could take the bone back to England for a dog. NON. The law about taking food away from restaurants forbade it. But by underhand means I did get the bone back, much to the dog's delight.
It was much later, when I had established two experimental vineyards and gathered enough information of growing grapes and choosing and importing wine that I started to write on the subject for newspapers and magazines. In so doing and sending my printed words to the people who mattered, I was asked to join an elite band of writers on wine.
I was now invited to travel and eat and drink wine in opulence. But whereas my fellows were interested in the upper layers of the market, I was concentrating on the lower end. So with the grand offerings I asked to taste the local 'ordinaires' - sometimes lowering the tone, I fear. My wines were of interest to the supermarket buyers, and it was for them and their supermarket consumers that I was writing. This was a great learning curve for myself and for those who read my columns. Actually, the high life did have its drawbacks. Nouvelle cuisine was in vogue. After a meal, when we might have been offered such as a prawn in a sea of blackcurrant juice with a few sage leaves floating around in it, it seemed obligatory to shake the chef's clammy hand as he walked around the table to be congratulated.
It was seeing grapes entering a winery in Cahors that were covered with blue copper spray that determined me to find grape varieties that needed no spray at all. I managed this before giving up wine-writing, also at a time when others realised that their readers did not all drink fine wine.
But not all venues for us privileged writers were grand. In Pisa we were taken to a sort of souvenir shop near to the leaning tower that had a small restaurant at the rear. That was when the only wine on offer was local, which was delicious and just the kind I like.
When on my own in Italy and determined to reach Certaldo where Boccaccio sheltered from the plague and wrote the Decameron, I not only found the lovely villa on a hilltop, but saw that in almost every doorway sat old ladies weaving rushes around Chianti fiascos. I bought two large ones for washing water. By soaking the rushes in water the contents of the bottles cooled down by the latent heat of evaporation.
Later, in Sienna, I was given most wonderful red wine made by the patron's family of the café were I was eating. So I returned to my camping kind of car - a vehicle that I designed for the voyage - emptied the fiascos of their water and had it replaced with the café's red wine.
With the old car breaking down every so often in Spain and Italy it was a lovely experience to meet helpers and kind people with natural mechanical skills.
That was the way it was.
My writing on wine needed no expert knowledge, unlike my fellow wine writers. But over the years I had kept my eyes open with a view to one day establishing a vineyard. I had tasted many a wine and imported quite a lot in cask from France and Spain to bottle at home, study and drink. I possessed an acute sense of smell - for wine and even people. And I had written several books on the subject and countless articles with the theme of "wine is natural and healthy, Let's learn together".
Of course wine and food can be treated in a most exulted manner by anyone. But really wine is just a very nice drink with food and food with wine - especially in Italy when one seems to be made to go with the other. Any wine you like will surely go with any food you like. Balance is necessary. Your body accepts it and will be tolerant, as mine has been for 95 years.
