Tim James: Travels and wine – a few irritations, some great bottles

Something was needed, I thought, to jolt me from my rut. So I resolved on a rare foreign break, despite all the awfulness and anxiety (as it seemed from the rut perspective) of arrangements and airports.

Not a calculatedly wine trip but, for a wine person, consciousness of wine inevitably intrudes. It did so from the start, in the usual way, with anger and irritation at seeing the cost of wine in the “Big Five Duty Free” shop at Cape Town airport. Duty- free perhaps, but they more than make up for it by piling on the profit they extract from home-bound tourists, who pay vastly more than they would do in a bottle-store in town. As examples, take Jordan Sophia selling there for R755 compared with the usual R600-odd; or Donkiesbaai Steen for R475 instead of around R350. This appallingly greedy cynicism is actually a real scandal, I think, one that the tourism industry should look into and protest at. (Shareholders include German travel retailer Gebr. Heinemann; luxury distributor and retailer CAVI Brands; a women-owned investment consortium including Zithezava and Rumbi Investments; and Maponya Investment Holdings.)

The grumpy news continued on the KLM flight to Amsterdam, with narrower seats than I remembered or even thought possible. The only positive thing to say about the little dinky plastic bottle of red wine was that it was a good match for the awful food. If it hadn’t caused such a bother when I knocked over the “glass” and splashed it over myself – and inevitably a little over my neighbour – I could cheerfully have just said good riddance. I certainly didn’t ask for more.

Wine, airports and the cost of travel

On the other hand, duty-free wine shelves in European airports seem to be up a little from their nadir – though nowhere like they were when, for example, Berry Bros had a branch at Heathrow (I remember buying well-priced bottles of DRC Grands Echezeaux and Hugel Clos Ste Hune there a few decades back). I should have bought a bottle or two at Schipol when waiting for my London connection: I could have done better, in terms of price and with a few years on the bottle, than at Waitrose in Bloomsbury.

Not that I was eating or drinking much in my six nights in a small flat – my bottle of Rioja Beronia Reserva lasted me for a few meals. More delicious and interesting, I thought, was the bottle of Ollieux Romanis Soufle de Lune 2022 Corbières I shared with a London-based South African friend who took me to a cheerfully packed little French bistro in Soho for dinner (delicious food too).

I was very generously treated on this trip, in fact. Next day I was extravagantly indulged by a good friend who has a taste (and pocket) for rather grand establishment places. After breakfast at Simpsons on the Strand, and then some good walking and a morning at the Wallace Collection, my favourite public gallery in London, we lunched, lightly and smartly, at The Wolseley “café-restaurant” in Mayfair (in what had been the 1920s showroom of Wolseley Motors) – I with a salade niçoise. There I had, in fact, my sole wine for the day – a glass of good champagne, which was exactly the right thing after the morning’s exertions. I’m not a devoted sparkling-wine person, but this was perfectly suited. No wine in the evening, as we went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner and drank Chinese beer (with a large neighbouring table of Chinese people making a fearsome amount of noise as they downed rice-wine spirits of alarming strength – which was confirmed when we checked the discarded bottles later, after they’d moved on).

A 60-year-old GS Cabernet makes the journey worthwhile

The wine highlight of my visit came the next day when I spent a wonderful evening with my friend Neil Beckett, illustrious editor of the World of Fine Wine. We hadn’t seen each other for a decade or more, but the time fell away, helped by a copious flow of serious wine and the excellent, elegant meal he prepared after a day’s work. Spanish ham with JJ Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Kabinett – still quite fruitily youthful and delicious; then scallops with a remarkable Chablis, Raveneau Montée de Tonnerre 1996. To my taste it showed just a touch too developed on the nose, but the fine, richly acidic palate was splendid.

Then, with grouse (a rare treat for a colonial!), the wine that I’d brought over, my last bottle of GS Cabernet 1966 (a rare treat for the metropolitan!). It had a very promising, high-shoulder, ullage and the cork came out fine with a little encouragement, and the wine was as good as I’d hoped. Nearly two decades ago, I’d drunk both vintages of GS (66 and 68) at dinner with Neil and fellow-Brit Stephen Spurrier, who’d both come out to judge on the Trophy Wine Show, with Louise Hofmeyr of Welgemeend, who’d supplied the wines from her cellar – it was still quite early days in GS’s fame and cultism. Both wines were spectacular then and so was the 1966 in London last week, 60 years after its harvest – darkly rich and full-flavoured, amazingly fresh and lively, with fully resolved tannins but no sign of tiring. Just a little was left in the bottle when we returned to the whites to accompany some splendid English cheeses. Great wines, company and food. Sometimes it’s foolish to save a wine for a special occasion, and then sometimes it’s fully worth it. My 2am Uber took me back to Bloomsbury exhilarated and happy.

And so, via Eurostar, to Paris – “on fire”, the papers said, but not in Montmartre, where I spent my mere two days. And there I realised that, because I’d thought only of being in a flat in London, I had neglected to bring my usual basic equipment for dealing with hotel room eating: sharp knife, fork, spoon, corkscrew and a decent wineglass. But good food and wine was easily available, of course – I was pleased to see, despite declines in French wine consumption, that all the many little corner shops had a few shelves of wine. And the smallish supermarket around the corner had, in fact, a pretty good selection (all French, of course), from which I chose a very pleasing 2021 St-Julien, the second label of Ch Lagrange. I bought a corkscrew to open it, but it had to suffer the indignity of being drunk from the green plastic tumbler from my bathroom.

More Bordeaux for me from the duty-free at Charles De Gaulle airport – a good shop, unlike the exploitative set-up in Cape Town. Wider seats and better food and wine (an acceptable French merlot) on Air France – and, bless them, they even offered a tiny bottle of cognac after the meal. Vive la France! Back home to the dogs and to settle down in my comfortable rut once more. First dinner back, to welcome myself I opened a bottle of Van Loggerenberg Graft 2017– the maiden vintage, which included cinsault along with the syrah. No problem there; none at all.

• Tim James is one of South Africa’s leading wine commentators, contributing to various local and international wine publications. His book Wines of the New South Africa – Tradition and Revolution appeared in 2013.