A VERY GOOD BERRY INDEED

Older readers will remember when there were “seasons”, i.e. certain times of the year, when different vegetables and fruits were available in the shops and markets for just a few weeks. Nowadays, of course, we bring in food from countries far and wide, so that we are never without our favourites. I expect some of you will remember when strawberries were first widely grown here and came into our shops about now for a few months. Many oldies think they tasted better then – “They weren’t forced, under glass”, the say “they grew outside, in their own time”.

Like maize (corn), green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, avocado, groundnuts, tomatoes, chilli peppers, squash (courgettes/marrows), and many others, the ancestor of the plump, luscious strawberries we know today came from the New World. But it took the French to make it what it is. The garden strawberry was first bred in Brittany, France, in the 1750s through the “crossing” of a fruit called Fragaria virginiana from eastern North America and Fragaria chiloensis, which was brought from Chile in 1714. Cultivars of Fragaria ? ananassa have replaced, in commercial production, the woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca), which was the first strawberry species cultivated in the early 17th century.

In some places in France, Britain and other European countries you can still find wild strawberries. They are small and with a well developed if slightly sour flavour. Many years ago on a visit to France, my wife and I had lunch at a restaurant close to woodlands not far from Paris. It was a glorious day, the setting was perfect, we had just eaten sublime cold roast chicken and couldn’t refuse the bowl of little scarlet fruit the waiter brought, with a bowl of rich cream. The fruits were small, quite sharp in flavour and very slightly gritty. They were an experience, though, and at the end of the meal the bill was large and less palatable. Memorable, nonetheless.

How can you tell good wine from bad; how can you become a Wine Connoisseur?

Firstly, by using your senses and your common sense. By looking at it, smelling it and tasting it with critical eyes, nose and palate before committing it to your physical and mental senses.

Examine your wine critically: first, LOOK - it must be not only clear but brilliant, be it ruby or amber, young or old, cheap or expensive. If it is dull or thick, reject it; if it is bright, let it go to the second stage – the examination by your sense of smell. In other words: SNIFF

Smell your wine critically: it must be clean-smelling. To get the best of its aroma, use quite a large wine glass that narrows quite a lot at the top and swirl the wine around the glass (which will also show you something of its viscosity) If you can detect the slightest mouldy, foul smell, or some unnatural, artificial scent, however, faint, leave it alone. If its discreet aroma is pleasant, remain a while with bowed head over your glass; try to remember the occasion when you last met the same charming ‘bouquet’ and what was the name of the wine. Then you may submit your wine to the test, in which your palate awaits it. Taste your wine critically: it must be clean and pleasant. If you detect any unsavoury, sour or merely suspicious taste, spit it out as you would a bad oyster or a piece of tainted meat. But if the wreath of tiny taste-buds of your tongue and palate receive your wine joyfully, pause but one instant, again to search your memory for the name and vintage of the wine you are drinking, and then swallow it gratefully.

As if to prove his point that wine in moderation was healthful to both mind and body, André Simon lived to be 93. Born in 1877 he was sent to England to learn English when he was 17. There he met and in 1900 married Edith Symons. He entered the wine trade by becoming the London agent for the champagne house of Pommery & Greno. A collector of fine books, his talent for writing soon emerged with The History of the Champagne Trade in England published in installments in the Wine Trade Review.

World War I took him back to France for military service but at the end of hositilites he was soon back in London, selling Champagne. His association with Pommery ended in 1931, by which time he was a well established figure of the UK wine trade.

With friends he founded the Wine Trade Club in 1908 and, in 1933, with publisher A.J.A. Symons the Wine & Food Society. André Simon was President and Editor of the Society journal, Wine and Food, whilst Symons handled business and financial affairs. The Society held its first banquet at the Savoy Hotel, London in January 1934.. On 11 December 1934, Simon founded in New York a branch of what would become the International Wine & Food Society, with branches across the United States, Australia and South Africa soon to follow. Symons died of a brain haemorrhage in 1941, at which point André Simon took over control of the Society. He only gave up editing and publishing Wine and Food in 1962 (at the age of 85), when Condé Nast Magazine acquired it. The first edition under their control was in Spring 1963, and the editor a former “Vogue” magazine copywriter named Hugh Johnson.

André Simon died in 1970. He believed that “a man dies too young if he leaves any wine in his cellar”; and there were only two magnums of claret remaining in his personal cellar when he passed away. Having seen the grand old man at wine and food functions during the 1960s and in awe of his work, I felt his passing was really the end of an era. At that time, not far from my offices near Great Portland Street was a very fine but unpretentious restaurant called Lacey’s run by top chef Bill Lacey and his famous food writer wife Margaret Costa. They organised a wake (a celebration of the life) for André Simon, which went on for several days and nights. I think it possible that everybody who was anybody in the trade attended at one hour or another to say God Speed to the great man. Such was the crowd that regular forays had to be made to a wine shop a few metres down the street, to replenish supplies. That shop stayed open almost all night on that occasion!

A proviso in Simon’s will left a sufficient quantity of 1945 Château Latour to celebrate what his centenary in 1977, when 400 guests gathered at the Savoy to drink to his memory. I cannot think of a better way to be remembered. Except perhaps by this tribute he wrote…

“Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilised.”