FOOD AND WINE

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 78, 29 September 1934, Page 24

FOOD AND WINE

THEIR RIGHTFUL PLACES

(By G. 0.)

Not yet a year old, the Wine and Food Society of England has already a yoll of members sufficiently largo to furnish a table with over 400 guests at a sitting. This took place in London, at Grosvcnor House, on the opening of the London season, and the first annual conference is to be held at Brighton next month. The founder of tho society is M. Andre L. Simon, an authority on wines, and a Frenchman having no illusions about England and Englishmen, who is convinced, he says, that "all arts may bo ignored with apparent impunity, all but one, and that tho art of self-preservation, which means the art of e:tting and drinking." Realising how much that art was neglected in England, M. Simon founded the Wine and Food Society last October. The object of this society was not to hold English cooking and taste in wines up to ridicule, but to assist tho people of England—not necessarily wealthy people—to a right understanding and appreciation of good food and wine.

The society's quarterly magazine, like itself, appears to be unique. Among its contributors are- such well-known writers as Horace Anneslcy Vachell, Martin Armstrong, Stephen Gwynnc, E. A. MacKenzie-Bell, G. B. Stern, and Professor Henry Armstrong, F.R.S. M. Simon also writes, and that learnedly but simply on wines. The contents of the quarterly ■ are varied, the articles being quito disinterested, and when they refer to the technique of the kitchen and table are quito as instructive as the immortal writings of Mrs. Beeton, and certainly more entertaining. As with a well-written book of travel and a legible atlas at hand, the armchair traveller may go far and in comfort independently of Thomas Cook and. Son, so with the quarterly of the Wino and. Food Society. The reader can be present and. enjoy (in fancy) the little tours of its members among the vineyards of the Vosges, the Loire, Touraine, tho Garonne, or tho Moselle; taste the vintage wines of the Saar and Mosello at the Hall of tho ancient Vintner's Company in London. He can dine with Mr. Eustace B. Hoaro (as M. Simon did) in company with Lord Bearstead, Mr. Anthony de Rothschild, Mr. C. M. Wells, and Mr. C. J. Brocklebank—and this is what they ate and drank (it is all in the quarterly):— Plovers' eggs, boiled salmon, chicken en casserole, savoury, fruit. A quite modest but artistic menu. And with the food went each in its proper place, the Chateau wines, La Laguno (1900), Mouton-Eothschild (1900), Margaux (1900 and 1899), Pichon-Longueville (1899), Haut-Brion (1899), Taylor's Port (1896), and Hines' Brandy (1906).

Again a peep is afforded into the Cellar Book of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. Here one may see the taste and discernment of a very rich man displayed in his wines. Clarets going back to 1805 and 1868, some in bottles, some in magnums and double magnums; madeiras in bottles and demijohns, and of vintages as remote as 1774, 1795, 1804, 1824, and 1838, only to mention a few of them; champagnes —one brand numbering 1000 bottles—of 1884, 1889, 1893, and 1893; Burgundies, "only 400 bottles," the list stated, including Komanee Couti (18C5); Rhenish wines and Sauternes (the latter including Chateau d'Yquem); sherries and ports by hundreds of bottles; and brandies, in which Mr. Morgan took great pride, as well he might, for he had over 1000 bottles of "the rarest Cognat in tho world" and the bins of which were of the years 1824 and 1842. Every bottle of this wonderful brandy bore his own initials upon bottle and cork. These comments on Mr. Morgan's cellar make no mention of how it came to elude the vigilance of the Prohibition officials.

It is curious, too, to learn from this unconventional quarterly, that in the city of Leicester itself a famous inn could, offer Cheddar, Eoquefort, Cainembert, and Gorgonzola, or any other cheese but that of Leicestershire; also that a traveller in Cardiff was unable to obtain at a prominent restaurant in that city any cheese of Caerphilly, although he could have had gruyere, or possibly New Zealand cheese, for' the asking.

Nowhere- in the quarterly in review will be found uncomplimentary references to tho best English food and its cooking—but they must bo the best to ho approved and to earn tho respect to whkh they aro fully entitled. Gourmandising receives no encouragement; economy in the kitchen is shown to be quite consistent with artistic and wholesome cooking; and even on so unpromising a subject as "Pots and Pans" a technician in M. X. Marcel Boulestin writes well and convincingly for the quite small household. Incidentally ho insists that cooking is a fine art "since science has done nothing for cooking except spoil it."

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