Notes of Nonsense

 

The Wine Seller
unknown artist
Photo Credit: Southend Museums [CC  BY-NC-SA]

There was news last week from Paris of a city-wide scam that would have been perfect for a show that celebrated the art of ripping off the dim and the gullible. It seems that when you order an expensive bottle of wine in many Parisian cafes and restaurants, what you actually get is plonk.

And no one is noticing. Of course they aren't. Every golfing-type man over 30 believes he can tell a Petrus from a beaujolais nouveau, and unless he's a trained sommelier, or French, he can't. I loathe the pomposity of this, and so did my father. In posh restaurants, to expose the nonsense of tasting wine, he used to take off his jacket and his cufflinks, roll up his sleeve and dip his elbow in the wine before declaring loudly: "Mmmmm. That's delicious."

This genetic hatred of wine snobs is why I find myself smiling at the mental image I have of some pompous British estate agent sitting in a pavement cafe in St Germain des Pres, extravagantly swirling his £65 wine round the glass and sniffing it and declaring to the cafe's conman owner that he can detect notes of hot handbags in a Bovril factory. Which he can't, because it's a 40p blend Ribena and vinegar. I'm amazed the waiter can keep a straight face...

Art fascinates me as well, because I have no idea what's good and what's not. I look at the paintings in a gallery sometimes and it's impossible to work out whether real talent has been deployed or whether the artist simply had a big night out and then vomited onto the canvas...

So that gives me an idea. I am a truly useless artist. Every time I try to draw something, it ends up looking like a dog. Perspective is beyond me. So are shadows. And I have a dithery hand, so you get the impression when you look at the dalmatian, which was supposed to be a rose, that I have delirium tremens.

Such is the power these days of social media, however, that it must be possible to convince the world that I've invented a whole new genre. And that critics are in awe of how I can make even a steam train look like a Jack Russell. A month of relentlessness on TikTok and soon the linen people who like to hang around in galleries in loafers with no socks would be stroking their stubble and making stupid art noises to one another about how they sold one of my "pieces" to a new hotel in Singapore for a million...

(Jeremy Clarkson, The Sunday Times, 2025)

Ah, yes. I'm getting the flavours of young peaches. It's aromatic, elegant and clean with very fine, mouth-coating  tannins, good harmony and persistence.