The Wine Blokes

As well as being a celebrated children’s author, photographer and linguist, Roald Dahl also had a penchant for chocolate and fine wine. He even went so far as to make a giant sphere of silver wrappers in his garden, such was his taste for chocolate. After his death in 1990, some of his wine collection was auctioned off at Christie’s including a case of 1982 Leoville Las Cases and a 175-year-old bottle of Massandra.

According to his second wife, Felicity Dahl, he ‘bought an enormous amount of 1983s and 1982s.’ Dahl was most interested in Bordeaux and left a wealth of first growths, including two cases of 1982 Lafite, Pichon Lalande, Cos d’Estournel, Chateau Bel-Air, Lafleur and other fine wines.

In the Dahl’s cellar, which Mrs Dahl now maintains, there is also a good collection of Burgundy, to which Mrs Dahl is adding by ‘doing swaps with the 82 Bordeaux‘.

Roald Dahl visited the Romanee-Conti vineyards whilst doing background research for an article entitled “Romanee-Contee and the Wine Maiden” and made detailed notes on the size of the vineyards and the price list of wines.

He also wrote of wine as part of his book “My Uncle Oswald”:

I can remember the two of us the next day eating lunch while sitting on the low white wall along the boundary of Romanée Conti - cold chicken, French Bread, a Fromage dur and a bottle of Romanée Conti itself. We spread our food on the top of the wall and stood the bottle alongside, together with two good wineglasses. My father drew the cork and poured the wine while I did my best to carve the chicken, and there we sat in the warm autumn sun, watching the grape-pickers combing the rows of vines, filling their baskets, bringing them to the heads of the rows, dumping the grapes into larger baskets which in turn were emptied into carts drawn by pale creamy brown horses.

I can remember my father sitting on the wall and waving a half-eaten drum stick in the direction of this splendid scene and saying, ‘You’re sitting, my boy, on the edge of the most famous piece of land in the whole world! Just look at it! Four and a half acres of flinty red clay! That’s all it is! But those grapes you can see them picking at this very moment will produce a wine that is a glory among wines. It is also almost unobtainable because so little of it is made. This bottle we are drinking now came from here eleven years ago. Smell it! Inhale the bouquet! Taste it! Drink it! But never try to describe it! It is impossible to put such a flavour into words! To drink a Romanée Conti is like having an orgasm in the mouth ad the nose both at the same time.’

I loved it when my father got himself worked up like this. Listening to him during those early years, I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiastic in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be^.