Desert Island Wines: Why a good bottle is the ultimate luxury item
A Desert Island Discs guest’s choice of wine is just as telling as their musical taste says Arden Fine Wines founder Stuart George...
Words: Stuart George
Guests on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs are invited to imagine themselves cast away on a desert island, to which they can take eight recordings, a book, and a ‘luxury’ item (which must be inanimate and of no use in escaping the island or allowing communication from outside). Needless to say, wine has been a very popular choice of luxury over the years.
Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, for example, plumped for “two enormous casks of Château Margaux”, which he imagined had been released from the deck of his wrecked vessel and sent “bobbing towards the beach”. Host Kirsty Young suggested a batch from the “very good” 1990, the year of his wedding. “Yes, let’s go with that,” he said. “I feel then I could stand anything.”
Julian Fellowes
Chateau Margaux 1990 and 1961
Natalia Makarova
Château Margaux was also chosen by the Russian ballerina Natalia Makarova when she guested in 1984. Unlike Fellowes, she named a specific vintage: the great 1961. General Sir John Hackett, speaking in 1980, was equally prescriptive, requesting “two dozen bottles of Château Latour 1962” by name, the last — and very good — vintage of Latour made under continuous family ownership (de Chavannes, de Clauzel, de Ségur, de Beaumont) since 1670. Sir John had tried, rather sweetly, to ask for “the presence of [his] wife”, but host Roy Plomley quickly told him that this was against the rules. Plomley later rounded up the General’s lot to “six dozen bottles — just so there are no hard feelings”.
Most Desert Island Discs wine requests are generic and without a specific amount. Journalist and politician Julian Critchley asked for “a case of wine”; Cecil Day-Lewis simply for “wine” in 1960 (though on a second appearance in 1968 he had switched to bourbon); and the actor Donald Sutherland wanted a “case of really good vintage wine”.
General Sir John Hackett
Chateau Latour 1962
Other guests specify a country or region. The politician Roy Jenkins requested “a case of Bordeaux wine”; the conductor Sir Simon Rattle “German white wine”; the American-born British chef Robert Carrier “Burgundy wine”; the conductor John Eliot Gardiner “Sancerre”; and the author P D James wanted “claret”. The American singer Gene Pitney wanted “a case of Opus One wine” — the only non-European wine choice that I could find.
A few of the interviewees on Desert Island Discs take the precaution of stocking up to ensure a plentiful supply while marooned. The politician David Davis asked for “a magic wine cellar that never runs out”; the author Ken Follett an “entire cellar of a great collector of French wine”; the explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison “a cask of claret”; the actor Laurence Harvey “a barrel of wine”; the author Edna O’Brien “a vault of very good white wine”.
The largest viable wine request was probably that of the journalist, author, and restaurateur Quentin Crewe, who requested “the cellar from Trinity College, Cambridge”, where he had studied in the early 1940s and been sent down (expelled) for partying. One wonders how much wine remained after Crewe had left Trinity, which is the richest of the Oxbridge colleges and is said to have a cellar of 25,000 bottles.
A surprising request was a “drinking fountain with taps for Sancerre and claret” by Lord (Norman) Tebbit, the British politician who was known for his austere mien and for telling the unemployed to “get on your bike” and look for work. Sancerre was also chosen by the actor James Nesbitt, who fancied “a bottle of chilled Sancerre for every night”.
Some guests are eminently practical. The Financial Times’ wine correspondent Jancis Robinson wanted a “cellar of wines and a corkscrew”. The actor Hugh Williams chose a corkscrew — but, perversely, no wine.
The recent lockdown caused a spike in alcohol sales, with supermarket shelves stripped bare of wine (and toilet paper, actually, though that’s a different article completely). For our own part, Arden Fine Wines has not been this busy since Christmas. Whether marooned at home or on some fictional desert island, it seems that isolation, for most of us, is made that bit more bearable with good wine to hand.
These are the wines to enjoy this summer – and the meals to pair them with…
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