A wine cellar filled with memories

After inheriting his father’s cherished wine collection, Jonathan Aris discovered a pastime that became a passion

 
I was a child when I learnt that wine was a magic potion. I would watch my father don ceremonial robes (his old National Service boiler suit) to exhume enchanted bottles that I wasn’t to touch from the sacred crawl space under our front room. The rituals of uncorking and decanting required an array of arcane instruments and breathless silence in the house. The Anglepoise lamp from the piano would be sacrificially contorted to uplight a trickle of elixir from bottle to decanter — a journey which, once begun, could never be interrupted lest horrible curses be uttered. But it was in the glass that wine performed a truly extraordinary trick: it came to life. To my infant eyes it looked like Ribena, but my father could detect “body”, a “nose”, “legs”, and weird odours of farmyards, ashtrays or rotting vegetation. Most magical of all, wine could distract and delight him, no matter how black his mood.

When I was young, if there was wine on the table I would be offered a sip. In my teens that became a glass, and my father would ask what I thought of it. He drip-fed me wine knowledge, and by stealth I began to learn a bit about what I was drinking. But not much: he was the expert, so I didn’t need to be. Gradually I realised that the wines at home really were exceptional. One Christmas in the 1980s I asked why the bottle of red he was decanting was made from clear glass, not the usual green. He replied that green glass was in short supply in the Forties because of the war. The wine was Château Latour 1945 — a great wine in a stupendous vintage — and probably not gracing many of our neighbours’ tables.

He didn’t consume wine in huge quantity — a bottle with the roast on Sunday, and often none during the week — nor did he spend vast sums on it. As a jobbing actor he would buy wine only when both he and the grapes had a good year. That natural filter made for a spectacular cellar.

My palate was spoilt for life, of course. The fluids that passed for wine at parties during school and university tasted like battery acid to me. I still drank them (and how), but I knew that I could always rely on my father to open a bottle of something delicious when I went home. And then, in 2003, he died, aged 66. I was 33, and like a billion bereaved sons before me I felt shipwrecked. When the quiet storm of grief and confusion had blown over, my mother, my sister and I began to rearrange our lives around the colossal hole my father had left. My sister was living abroad and my mother had enough to deal with, so responsibility for the cellarful of wines fell to me. Suddenly I needed to know which of those treasured bottles should be drunk when, so that none would be left to spoil (unthinkable) or opened before their prime.

Luckily, my father was an obsessive record-keeper. Having reluctantly bought a computer in his last years, he’d painstakingly inventoried his cellar using specialist wine software, entering “drink from” and “to” dates for each bottle. But thence sprang my first question — and how I wished Dad was around to ask: would those dates need revising? Most of the 500 or so bottles would mature for decades before drinking. Surely some might age faster or slower than projected? I turned to the authorities he most trusted: The Wine Society, Hugh Johnson and, rebelliously, to one he never consulted as far as I know, Robert Parker, the pre-eminent American wine critic whose opinions (and infamous 100-point scoring system) may be undesirably influential but whose website is useful for checking tasting notes and “drinking windows”.

The Wine Society is a co-operative that sells only to its members, operates on a non-profit basis and represents all that is good in the world. It offers carefully selected wines at all prices and its advice is unimpeachable. My father willed me his Wine Society membership and it’s gratifying to be keeping his share number alive. When Dad died, the chairman wrote me a personal letter expressing his and the committee’s sympathies and welcoming me as a member. You don’t get that in the far aisle of the supermarket.

Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book is an annual guide to wines from all over the world, including suggestions for when to drink which vintages. My sister used to buy it for my father each Christmas. Now my wife buys it for me.

Having studied when to drink the wines, I started learning how to drink them. At first, every sip had to be a solemn commemoration of the departed. Then I went to the other extreme and drank a 1978 Château Margaux with a pizza. Nowadays, I share the good stuff with family and friends, without flourish or fanfare, and take pleasure when they enjoy it.

Still, pulling a cork on one of my father’s bottles will always be meaningful. Most profound for me is the way that it it unpacks memories of Dad on many levels simultaneously. When I open a bottle from 1982, for instance, I think of him buying it aged 45, of myself aged 12 and of our relationship at the time, what acting job he’d done that paid for it, how he would be today were he alive, and so on. Magic potion indeed.

As the years pass, I relish keeping up his good work. I’ve started buying wines to top up the cellar for the future. Like my father, I try to restrict myself to the best wines in the best years. I buy tiny quantities en primeur (while the wines are still in barrel), when they are just about affordable, then tuck the bottles away for a few decades. It’s fascinating seeing where our tastes overlap or diverge. We share a passion for Château Haut-Brion, for example, but I’m not sure he would approve of my love affair with dry Rieslings. I’ve made mistakes. I allowed a couple of wines to get too old before drinking them. I probably bought too much of the 2003 vintage. Rookie errors, but it’s been a steep learning curve.

As I write, my wife is pregnant with our first child, who will never know my father but will certainly drink some of his wine. That’s not a bad consolation prize. In the meantime, I’m laying down wines that I may never drink. This year for the first time I calculated forwards to see whether the wines I’m considering buying from the 2008 vintage will outlive me. The best is expected to be drinkable until 2050, when I will be 80.

One of the quirks of buying wine en primeur is that you buy it years before it’s bottled, let alone shipped. My father’s final purchase was a case of Vieux Château Certan 2002, which was delivered two years after his death. It was a bittersweet experience laying it down in the cellar, but I can’t think of a better memorial. He may have gone, but a few hundred bottles of him are still ageing beautifully.

Jonathan’s tasting notes

Château Latour 1945 is still drinking well (and a snip at £2,000–£3,000 a bottle) but you can enjoy excellent Pauillac for much less.

AvosVins software, which helps to catalogue your cellar and keep track of when wine is ready to drink, can be downloaded from www.avosvins.ca for about £33. There is a free version to try before you buy.

The Wine Society offers lifetime membership for £40, with no obligation to buy, at thewinesociety.com.

Robert Parker’s website charges $99 (£60) for an annual subscription. Visit erobertparker.com.