I was just coming to the end of casting my eye over bottles of red wine in a supermarket, when I saw the name Prignac on a front label. Though a bit above our usual price range I bought it. And this is the reason why.
In the early 1960s I travelled to the Bordeaux region to drink and learn about their wines.
I settled in the unfashionable region of Bas Médoc, selecting a rather primitive auberge as my base. I was offered a sort of shed to sleep in and when asking for its sanitary arrangements, was directed to the surrounding trees and bushes. This was good advice as the lavatory in an outhouse of the establishment was quite disgusting.
It was that kind of place where the patronne and her daughter augmented their income doing other matters, so food might be delayed before being cooked and served. But the copious amounts of red wine consumed there by guests and locals was delicious ordinary Prignac. The wine came from the local co-op where it was made in an atmosphere so thick with fruit flies one could hardly breathe within its concrete construction without ingesting some of them.
Before leaving, I ordered my first cask (une demie barrique) of their 1966 to be delivered to me in London, fut perdu (non returnable barrel), fob (free on board).
When it arrived I paid carriage and duty (another tale), and bottled 150 bottles (gathered from outside bars and clubs at 4 am in the mornings).
I was later to order the same quantity of their '67 and '68 red.
Not knowing how to work the system, I was later to import a hogshead (353 bottles) of wonderful Rioja from Bilbainas, in Spain.
Those were the days when most fine wines came to England in cask and was bottled by the wine merchant. Now, barrels are used mainly for ageing good wine. With lesser quality, wine is either bottled at the château or co-operative, or imported in bulk and bottled in quantity where there is a market for it.
So from those very hands-on days of negotiating, and then bottling from barrel to bottle, the Château Tour Prignac, year of vintage, branded cork of fine quality, and price, still has much of the character and charm of the Prignac that I loved in the 1960s.
From the first sip of that newly discovered bottle, it was like meeting an old friend once more - but a much smarter friend who had come up in the world considerably.
