BEACHCOMBER

101 YEARS OLD AND STILL IN TWO MINDS ABOUT TUESDAY...

TUESDAYS have always been a bit of an enigma to me. Wednesdays are ostentatiously midweek, Thursdays show confidence in not being Fridays but Tuesdays are rather characterless. Take this week:

From the time I left for work, things began to go wrong. I was halfway to the bus stop when I realised that I had forgotten to bring the cardamom, chocolate and clementine dust biscuits I had promised a friend, so I returned home to pick them up. After about 15 minutes looking everywhere for them, I gave up. They were nowhere to be found despite the fact that I had made them only the evening before.

So I set off biscuitlessly again only to discover, when I reached the bus stop, that I had left my morning mug of coffee on the table while searching for the biscuits (which eventually turned out to be in the fridge).

I might, at that stage, have become downcast and written off Tuesday as a hopeless case but the thoughts of what the evening had in store kept me going. I had been invited to a caviar and cognac tasting in the Royal Suite of the Sofitel hotel in St James’s London. If anything was guaranteed to counter the Tuesdayness of it all, this, I felt, would do so. And when I got there, it was even better than I had expected. So good, in fact, that I quickly forgot it was Tuesday.

We began with a palate-cleansing glass of Laurent-Perrier champagne, which is always a great treat and set us up to slurp some samples of Sturia caviar from the backs of our hands (which I am assured is the right way to eat these delicious sturgeons’ eggs).

Sturia, I should explain, is the French company that makes better caviar than the Russians. Following a ban on fishing endangered wild sturgeon, they stole a march on the Russians by developing sturgeon farms and now even sell caviar to Moscow. I felt the saltiness of the eggs of the various sturgeon species we sampled was deliciously brought out by the purity of the Laurent-Perrier, but even better was to come. For then we moved into the main room of the Royal Suite to sample the Louis XIII cognac.

Until then, I considered Remy Martin to be the most thoroughbred of all cognacs. Louis XIII comes from the same stable as Remy Martin but is the result of an astonishingly century-long process. Each year a tiny percentage of the very best cognac is set aside for the Louis XIII blending. Only two men know the secrets and they are never allowed to travel on the same plane.

The result is a divinely complex drink with a bewildering mix of flavours provided by the passage of time on the very best distilled wines of 100 years. You start by sniffing its aromas from a distance, then bring it closer, then take a tiny sip, then enjoy it fully, each stage adding to one’s appreciation.

Last year, Louis XIII commissioned Pharrell Williams to compose a song called 100 Years, recorded on a single disc to be preserved and heard only in 100 years’ time when the best of the 2017 harvest will at last be included in the Louis XIII blend. I have no idea about the song but I am sure the cognac will be worth waiting for.