I loved it when my father got himself worked up like this. Listening to him during those early years, I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it, and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.
We visited Clos de Vougeot and Bonnes Mares and Clos de la Roche and Chambertin and many other marvellous places. We went down into the cellars of the châteaux and tasted last year’s wine from the barrels. We watched the grapes being pressed in gigantic wooden screw presses that required six men to turn the screw. We saw the juice being run off from the presses into the great wooden vats, and at Chambolle-Musigny, where they had started picking a week earlier than most of the others, we saw the grape juice coming alive in the colossal twelve-foot-high wooden vats, boiling and bubbling as it began its own magic process of converting sugar into alcohol. And while we actually stood there watching, the wine became so fiercely active and the boiling and bubbling reached such a pitch of frenzy that several men had to climb up and sit upon the cover of each vat to hold it down.
I have wandered again. I must get back to my story. But I did want to demonstrate to you very quickly that despite my tender years, I was quite capable of appreciating the quality of the wines I drank that evening at the British Embassy in Paris. They were indeed something to remember.
We started with a Chablis Grand Cru Grenouilles. Then a Latour. Then a Richebourg. And with the dessert, a d’Yquem of great age. I cannot remember the vintage of any one of them, but they were all pre-phylloxera.
When dinner was over, the women, led by Lady Makepiece, left the room. Sir Charles shepherded the men into a vast adjoining sitting-room to drink port and brandy and coffee.
In the sitting-room, as the men began to split up into groups, I quickly manoeuvred myself alongside the host himself. “Ah, there you are, my boy,” he said. “Come and sit here with me.”
Perfect.
There were eleven of us, including me, in this particular group, and Sir Charles courteously introduced me to each one of them in turn. “This is young Oswald Cornelius,” he said. “His father was our man in Copenhagen. Meet the German ambassador, Oswald.” I met the German ambassador. Then I met the Italian ambassador and the Hungarian ambassador and the Russian ambassador and the Peruvian ambassador and the Mexican ambassador. Then I met the French minister for foreign affairs and a French army general and lastly a funny little dark man from Japan who was introduced simply as Mr. Mitsouko. Every one of them spoke English, and it seemed that out of courtesy to their host they were making it the language of the evening.
“Have a glass of port, young man,” Sir Charles Makepiece said to me, “and pass it round.” I poured myself some port and carefully passed the decanter to my left. “This is a good bottle. Fonseca’s eighty-seven. Your father tells me you’ve got a scholarship to Trinity. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. My moment was coming any second now. I must not miss it. I must plunge in.
“What’s your subject?” Sir Charles asked me.
“Science, sir,” I answered. Then I plunged. “As a matter of fact,” I said, lifting my voice just enough for them all to hear me, “there’s some absolutely amazing work being done in one of the laboratories up there at this moment. Highly secret. You simply wouldn’t believe what they’ve just discovered.”
Ten heads came up and ten pairs of eyes rose from port glasses and coffee cups and regarded me with mild interest.
“I didn’t know you’d already gone up,” Sir Charles said. “I thought you had a year to wait and that’s why you’re over here.”