Read an extract from Peter Stafford-Bow’s new Felix Hart novel

Peter Stafford-Bow is back with a new novel about his heroic Head of Wine at the country’s largest supermarket chain. 

The novel, which is the fourth in the series of books about Felix Hart, promises to be a “wine-fuelled adventure between London and China” that seeks to expose an international wine fraud conspiracy. It follows his previous novels, Corkscrew, Brut Force and Firing Blancs.

Knowing ‘his burgers from his Bourgogne’, when Hart works with the world’s most ruthless luxury goods corporation, offering him a life-changing sum of money to investigate a billionaire wine fraudster, he suspects there might be a catch. But a wine buyer’s salary only goes so far, and his moral compass directs him east, to China’s golden, haze-shrouded megacities.

There, Hart is faced with his greatest challenge yet; a conspiracy as mind-bending as it is terrifying, and which threatens to consume the entire world.

Eastern Promise is available to purchase from Monday 3rd July via Amazon and bookshops nationwide at RRP £9.99.

Excerpt:

The story begins with Felix Hart, the cheerfully amoral supermarket executive, undercover at a fine wine tasting hosted by a criminal counterfeiting ring.

“Let no-one be in doubt,” declared The Liar, “this vineyard was sown by the hand of God!”

The guests nodded. They knew.

As one, they swirled their glasses, sending the dark wine spinning. I followed. They bowed beneath the dimmed spotlights and inhaled. As did I. Eyes widened. Pulses rose. The guests straightened, transformed. Some sighed, others grinned. I smiled with them.

My neighbour gave me a conspiratorial smirk. “That’s a bitchin’ wine!”

Murmurs of agreement from our fellow guests. The man’s judgment was sound.

“Pomerol is the motherlode of the Right Bank,” continued The Liar, from the head of the table. He gestured at the empty magnums before him, then held his glass aloft like a flaming torch. “And Pétrus the jewel in its crown!”

As one, the guests imbibed. Some sucked air through the wine, as true connoisseurs do. The room filled with the sound of muted gurgling as black-stained gums were bathed, reverently, in the juice of one of Bordeaux’s finest estates. I tilted my glass, trying to gauge the wine’s colour in the restaurant’s gloom.

“Gentlemen,” purred The Liar, “I’ll let the wine do the talking. You don’t need me to tell you that 1990 was the finest vintage of the past half-century.”

The assembled guests did not. No-one spending five thousand pounds on a fine wine tasting hosted by the sommeliers of Magnum Club Platine needed informing which vintages were the century’s finest. And there were no round-bellied, red-nosed old soaks here either. My fellow afficionados were sharp, well-groomed, and immaculately moisturised. Apple watches and designer jeans. Two shirt buttons undone, sometimes three.

With a flick of my wrist, I sent the liquid spinning once more and brought it to my nose. Lifting my pencil, I added ‘Bitchin…’ to my tasting note.

I watched The Liar from the corner of my eye. Strictly speaking, of course, he hadn’t actually lied. Not out loud, at least. 1990 was, without doubt, an extremely fine vintage. By general consensus, one of the best ever. And Pomerol, that hump of gravel overlooking the last few miles of the fat, meandering Dordogne before it nudges its way into the Gironde estuary, might well be described as the motherlode. Neighbouring St-Émilion had the heritage and by far the prettier village, but from an auction price perspective, Pomerol was top dog. As to whether the good Lord had sown the clay soils of Pétrus’s vineyards with His own hand, you’d have to ask a higher religious authority than myself. But I had no reason to doubt it.

So, you may well ask, what’s your beef, Felix Hart? Why so judgmental?

The short answer, of course, is that it’s my job. As Head of Alcoholic Beverages for the country’s largest supermarket chain, judging the quality and value of the world’s wines is the role for which I was placed upon this earth. The disappointed wrinkle of the nostril, the contemptuously expelled spurt of Cabernet, the dismissive wave of the goblet; these are the tools of my trade. “More Pétrus, sir?”

The waiter’s eyes flickered over my tasting sheet. I placed my arm across the paper.

“Please.”

“You’re making a lot of notes, sir,” he said, delivering a stream of red from the decanter’s spout to my razor-thin Zalto.

“Yes, I’m studying to be a waiter.”

The waiter scowled and moved on to my neighbour.

Not that my fellow guests, nor The Liar hosting the event, would have been aware of my day job. To them, I was Rupert Gastlington, Chief Marketing Officer of Throat, a new dating app designed to match lonely or promiscuous wine-lovers with similarly inclined partners, based on their palate compatibility. I’d come up with the cover story myself, just twenty-four hours earlier, and I was slightly taken aback by how many of my fellow attendees appeared genuinely keen on investing.

But the purpose of an evening at Magnum Club Platine wasn’t to raise Series A funding for one’s tech start-up – that was a mere side benefit. Magnum Club Platine described itself, in its Instagram bio, as a ‘Gated Community for Serious People who love Serious Wine’. In plain English, a playground in which society’s young winners could cartwheel through the finest beverages known to humanity without the buzz-killing presence of oiks on a budget. Membership of Magnum Club Platine was strictly invitation only and required a joining fee of ten thousand pounds. The monthly events – all of which were over-subscribed – each cost a further five grand. The evenings only ever featured top-end Bordeaux, Burgundy or a handful of New World icon wines, all served, as you may have guessed, en magnum. Tonight’s theme was ‘Premiership Pomerol’.

Again, you might ask, why was Felix Hart, wine democratiser and humble man of the people, attending such an event? Why would I hose thousands of pounds down the pan just to spend an evening in the private dining room of a ponce-infested Hoxton restaurant, surrounded by men gargling Chateau Le Pin and swooning over the disruptive potential of the Estonian fintech scene? Principally, I’m pleased to say, because someone else was paying.