Adventures in Cellar land

Wine sales are falling. Indeed, consumption of all alcohol is plummeting as Gen Z fails to pull its weight. Sad but true: one fifth of the population doesn’t drink. Dear oh dear.

When I was Gen Z’s age, we emulated our parents and drank like there was no tomorrow, glorying in both grape and grain and delighting in gifts of fine vino from adoring uncles, aunts and godparents, tucking them away in cobwebbed cupboards, vaulted cellars or with merchants, happy to wait 20 years until they were ready to drink. In this era of instant gratification, though, you might ask, who the heck wants to wait that long?

Well, happily, there are plenty of us old soaks for whom a fully mature bottle is a thing of joy. As drinks editor of The Spectator, I’m proud to oversee a thriving wine club and was delighted to discover that 25% of our readers own a cellar or store wines with cellaring companies.

I also learned that readers of The Spectator drink more units of alcohol per head, per week, than readers of any other publication. It quite brought a tear of pride to my eye.

Our readers love their wine, and our BYOB lunches in the Spectator boardroom are uproarious, with readers bringing fascinating treats from their cellars to share. I’m looking forward to our first away match at Octavian’s Corsham Cellars in October.

A cellar, a bona fide underground cellar, is a glorious thing, and one of the most handsome is that of Berry Bros & Rudd in London’s St. James’s, where I once worked.

Set over two subterranean floors, the cellar is said to have a secret passage to St. James’s Palace and, famously, is where Napoleon III met agents to plot his return to France in the 1840s. They still call it the Napoleon Cellar today.

This is where I batted away a customer who came to visit his case of port “to make sure the bottles are being turned regularly.” I assured him that they weren’t and that it would be a terrible thing if they were.

Another customer, discovering that his godson was a teetotaller, came to remove the many bottles he’d given him. We had quite a tussle telling him he couldn’t. He left in tears.

An elderly acquaintance had a vast cellar beneath his Yorkshire mansion, complete with decanting bench, armchair, candles and a bespoke, fully equipped cocktail table upon which he would take hours mixing the most combustible of Bloody Marys.

Another had a beautiful, flagstone cellar he visited daily. His wife could never understand why. I could. My chum had installed a secret panel behind the Lafite to house a priceless collection of Victorian erotica which he enjoyed ‘cataloguing’.

I recall another couple who on their divorce split their cellar: he got the clarets, she got the burgundies, and they shared custody of the Rhônes.

Most impressive of all, though, was a former customer’s magnum-only cellar, with nary a half magnum in sight.

Go big or go home, I say.

Johnny Ray is The Spectator’s drinks editor and formerly wine critic for the Telegraph. He has also written several books on the subject of wine and how to buy it.