Corkscrew extract: elimination chamber

4.1 Harvest Day: It is early January and the day of the feared Minstrels of Wine practical exam, La Vendange, is upon us. Felix Hart, our hero, dons his dinner jacket and presents himself at Minstrels Hall, along with the other candidates or ‘Initiates’. He is blindfolded at the entrance and escorted into the auditorium by his personal guide, a man who insists, for some unknown reason, on being referred to as ‘Frog’…

I felt Frog’s hands remove my blindfold. I blinked in the light for a second and then gasped. I was in the centre of a large theatre, surrounded on three sides by the audience. As I had perceived, the rows of seats were tiered. There were a dozen rows, tiered steeply from ground level to way above my head. The theatre was full and I guessed that most of the Institute’s thousand members were present.

There was a sort of VIP box halfway up one side, in which sat an older man on a throne holding a staff – I decided he must be the Invocator. The audience were dressed in their finery, dinner jackets for most of the men, ball gowns for the women. I also spotted many varieties of regional dress, Japanese men in formal striped kimono and African women in brightly printed dresses. I assumed that, somewhere up there, Joan from Gatesave and perhaps Paul and Gillian from the old days at Charlie’s Cellar were watching.

The cream of the world’s wine industry had turned out to see me sink or swim.

At the front, from where the fanfare had sounded, a full orchestra was seated on a low stage. In front of them stood a bench on which a collection of musical instruments lay, no doubt for the recital part of the examination.

On the floor of the theatre, overlooked by the audience, were fifteen very long tables, running parallel to one another, the kind of thing you might have seen at a large medieval banquet. Each was perhaps twenty yards in length and covered in white linen. We fifteen Initiates were standing at the head of our own tables, accompanied by our Frogs – our personal examiner and potential executioner.

But the most intimidating sight lay on the tables. On each was a perfectly straight line of wine glasses, spaced just a couple of inches apart. They stretched the entire length of the floor and each contained a quarter-glass of wine. My blood ran cold as I tried to estimate how many there were.

The glasses closest to us contained pale white wine, and I could see the colour darkening as the line stretched away. Towards the halfway mark the colour changed to pink, then to red, with presumably the darkest, most intense wines at the end, nearest the orchestra. And we were allowed just five wrong answers before we were kicked out!

I looked at my fellow Initiates. It seemed a long time since we christened ourselves Les Quinze and drank our bodyweight in Patagonian Malbec. Everyone else was facing forward, grimly contemplating their row of wines stretching into the distance. My table was roughly in the middle of the fifteen. To my right was Hugo, a French sommelier from Paris, to my left an Italian woman who worked as a buyer for a chain of upmarket delis. I spotted Valentina, my Argentinian winemaking squeeze, at the far end, frowning defiantly at her table, looking wonderful in a black, figure-hugging dress.

“There are one hundred and eighty wines on the table, Mr Hart,” whispered Frog, removing any doubt. “You have two hours. You may begin.”

A large digital stopwatch, high in the corner of the hall, began its countdown. I don’t know which of my fellow Initiates moved first – I was focused on my table to the exclusion of all else. I took a deep breath and grasped the first glass by the stem.

Before I had even swirled the glass, I spotted the fine bubbles rising in the pale golden wine. A quick sniff confirmed it was Champagne, a good one, probably vintage. I concentrated on the aroma – it jumped with delicious brioche and biscuit aromas, and it was clean and creamy. I took a mouthful – a Chardonnay-dominated blend for sure, maybe a pure Blanc de Blancs. I looked around for the spittoon and with a shock remembered the no spitting rule. I turned to see Frog watching me closely. I swallowed the mouthful. Christ Felix, take smaller sips! Many more gulps like this and you’ll pass out before you’re quarter of the way through.

“Chardonnay, a small component of Pinot Noir, Champagne region,” I whispered.

Frog nodded and I grasped the next glass. Small bloody sips, Felix. I could see this one had bubbles too. A sniff conjured up a drunken evening in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter, crammed into a hot bar, a beautiful Catalan woman with long slim limbs nuzzling my neck…

“Macabeo, Parellada and Xarel-lo. Penedès region.”

Another nod. Another glass. More bubbles. This one less obvious, a creamy lemon bouquet, possibly Chardonnay, but richer than the first wine, with punchier, tropical fruit notes. The tasting room at Charlie’s Cellar appeared in front of me, one of the buying team teaching me the difference between sparkling wines. Who was it? That clipped, precise way of speaking – it was Paul, probably sitting somewhere in this very audience. In my mind’s eye I could see him holding up a lean Tasmanian sparkling wine next to a more generous Hunter Valley fizz…

“Chardonnay again. Hunter Valley, Australia.”

The nod again. Thank God. That’s three down, only one hundred and seventy-seven to go.

At that moment there was a buzz and a quiet chorus of ‘Oooh!’ from the crowd. I looked around and saw one of the Frogs with his hand raised. It was Fernanda, the Chilean winemaker. Poor Fernanda, she was a nice lady – a little intense for my taste – but I felt sorry for her making an error so early on. I wondered what she had misidentified. Maybe the Aussie fizz had fooled her or was there a fiendishly difficult wine a little further down the line? Whatever, I mustn’t be distracted.

I saw that people were looking towards the high, vaulted roof and I followed their gaze. I gasped out loud when I spotted the huge screen suspended from the ceiling. Projected upon it were each of our surnames in alphabetical order. Fernanda Guerra’s name, just above my own, had a big red cross next to it. There was room for five crosses next to each name, after which… goodbye.

Peter Stafford-Bow is a former top wine executive with decades of experience in the head offices of retailers and wine producers but he writes under a pseudonym. Corkscrew is his first novel and any disgraceful behaviour exhibited by the characters is almost entirely fictional. 

Corkscrew is available at Amazon and in independent bookshops with an RRP of £9.99 for a paperback and £4.99 for the e-book.