Vintage Read Online Free PDF Page B

once seen, never forgotten.
    Big Mick, founder of Wine Watch, a US magazine sold on subscription, was reputedly the most influential wine critic in the business (‘If Bly gives it a ninety you can’t buy it, and if Bly gives it less than ninety you can’t sell it’). A seriously heavy man with a penchant for seriously heavy wines, he was feared throughoutBordeaux, where obsequious cellarmasters were said to keep a ‘barrique Bly’, a hogshead of especially potent claret, in readiness for his unannounced visits. Bly’s talent was for tasting undrinkable stuff straight from the vat and predicting whether, given time, it would become a great wine. Since his numerical ratings and tasting notes were read, and slavishly followed, by readers throughout the world, Bly could make or break a grower. He had never set foot inside Château de Cluzac. No journalist ever had.
    Clare took in the meticulously distressed denims, the luridly checked workshirt and the crumpled linen jacket which had most likely cost more than a bespoke suit.
    ‘Clare de Cluzac! Just wait till I tell Toni!’
    Toni, Big Mick’s diminutive, polyglot wife and éminence grise, travelled everywhere with him, looked after his diary and set up his European meetings.
    ‘You’re not going to believe this, but Toni and I were only talking about you yesterday at the Reform Club. Stephan von Neipperg, the Tesserons from Pontet Canet, Daniel and Florence Cathiard, everyone was there…’
    ‘Why on earth would you be talking about me?’
    ‘Well strictly speaking, it wasn’t exactly about you. It was about your father.’
    ‘What’s he been up to?’ The enquiry was polite. Clare was not all that interested.
    ‘Didn’t you hear the news…?’
    Clare imagined a peccadillo involving her father, some woman or another, on the front page of Sud-Ouest, although, unlike the English whose appetite for prurient gossip, particularly among politicians, was insatiable, the French were generally not exercised about such matters.
    ‘Château de Cluzac is on the market,’ Big Mick said.
    ‘On the market!’
    It was as if Bly had told her that the Howard family had put their ancestral home in a Yorkshire estate agent’s window, or that the Marquess of Bath was getting rid of Longleat after four hundred years of unbroken occupation.
    Taking her for coffee in South Molton Street, where they sat at a pavement table, Big Mick filled Clare in with what was happening in the backwaters of the Médoc, which hadn’t known such excitement in years. There was no longer anything to be said about the quality of her father’s wine, which had been steadily deteriorating and was now near the bottom of the league table in Wine Watch (‘a below average wine containing noticeable flaws’). However, the unique position of Château de Cluzac, with its eastern slopes, well-drained soil, and sans-pareil vineyards, in the patch of agricultural land alongside the Gironde river which ranked among the most expensive in Europe, had attracted a great many private and institutional buyers, including wealthy Japanese businessmen and Parisian bankers.
    Bordeaux had always attracted corporate money and outside investors. Very few vineyards were still family owned and two or three of these changed hands each year, depending on how well the market was doing. Among those who were anxious to get their hands on the Cluzac estate were a German financier who wanted to convert it into a luxury hotel and conference centre, a Swiss consortium which had plans for adding it to its chain of exclusive health resorts, and a wealthy Californian who aimed to create a Napa-Valley-style theme park in the Médoc. According to Big Mick, who had his ear to the grapevine, the Baron had seen off the more bizarre contenders, and three prospective purchasers had made the final running.
    Alain Lamotte, on behalf of Assurance Mondiale, one of the first major investors to run a group of vineyards as a business, was anxious to