This is the story of twelve friends who gathered to share and celebrate the most extraordinary wines of Bordeaux. Neil McKendrick, member and minute-taker for fifty-seven of the Club’s seventy memorable years, weaves the tale of this convivial group with the rigour of a Cambridge academic and the humour of a born raconteur. He celebrates the beauty of top-class Bordeaux and the splendour of each setting—from glorious country houses to rickety Dickensian boardrooms—in which these men were lucky enough to dine, serving up memories of vintages the likes of which we will never see again.
In The Bordeaux Club:
• ‘Well over 1,000 bottles consumed…’: Bordeaux’ top wines described by the brilliant Hugh Johnson, Michael Broadbent and Steven Spurrier
• Verdicts and opinions from the historian Sir John Plumb, ‘the rudest man in Cambridge’
• 1865, 1929, 1945, 1961, 1985, 1990… the highlights of these six famous Bordeaux vintages are revealed
• Haut-Brion, Lafite, Mouton-Rothschild, Margaux and Latour – the Médoc’s first growths appraised by the finest palates
• From the grandeur of Saling Hall (Essex) to the extensively portraited Master’s Lodge at Caius College, Cambridge: 16 perfect settings for wine enjoyment
• Keeper of the deepest cellar (and partner to most notorious wife), Lord Harry Walston’s irresistibly scandalous lifestyle explored
• Notes of the author’s extraordinary £1 purchases from the Caius College Cellar (Latour 1928, Lafite 1945) – for sale at this low price because the dons couldn’t drink them with pineapple…
• Abominations and anomalies, the wines that courted controversy: white burgundy, Moscato d’Asti and the contentious clarets of 1927