2020 in the Rearview Mirror

BY NEAL MARTIN | DECEMBER 23, 2020

On - My Year

1 January 2020. I woke up feeling like a dog’s dinner having fallen ill the previous night. I felt like a Nokia that hasn’t been charged since 2003. Must have been something I picked up in Hong Kong just before Christmas. Then there was a persistent dry cough. That’s not on the checklist of main flu symptoms.

COVID?

Who knows? Nobody knew about it apart from a poor few souls in Wuhan. In any case, I had other things on my mind. The year was barely out of the starting blocks, and I was back in hospital having sternal wires removed. Extricating unwanted souvenirs of last year’s trauma put me in a frame of mind for an action-packed 2020, so onward and...

...COVID happened. First the biannual Grands Jours was cancelled and then the world nearly wobbled off its axis when en primeur fell victim. 

I confess that the first lockdown had its silver linings that made it bearable and even intermittently enjoyable. It felt like a rerun of 2019 except that freedom was curtailed by global illness instead of a personal one. I counted my lucky stars. If I had contracted COVID before my operation, then I wouldn’t have stood a chance in hell. With sternal wires gone, I gained upper body flexibility and this enabled me to do something that I never imagined enjoying, let alone doing...

Jogging!

Catalysts for many, a Vinous article popped into my febrile imagination whilst pounding the streets. Initial fears that I would be twiddling my thumbs during lockdown soon vanished as pallets piled with primeur samples materialised on my driveway and grateful neighbours began being inundated with leftovers. My next-door neighbour made a delicious vinaigrette from the remains of a 2019 First Growth.

In August, when many thought we were out of the woods, the governments “Eat Out” campaign saw restaurants packed with customers enjoying 50% off their bill, and I packed in as much eating out as I could. The summer lull in COVID, coincided with the return of my wanderlust. A short trip to Chablis was just the tonic and reaffirmed that I feed off travelling and tasting in the region. I need that human interaction. By September I began considering how I was going to taste Burgundy from barrel since missing such an important report was untenable. So after a precautionary flu jab (I’ve felt like a human pin cushion in recent months) I embarked on a month’s intensive tasting before the second wave reared its ugly head and curtailed my trip. I had never worked so hard, but it “got me out of the house” as the saying goes.

Lockdown Part II has been harder to deal with, as most people have found, though I am thankful that so far the virus has not contracted me, unless that really was COVID in January. At least there is light on the horizon with news of vaccines. Call me a deluded optimist, but I believe that after what is going to be a hard few weeks, life will spring back to a sense of normalcy and society will have a newfound appreciation of the many things we have missed. Roll on 2021. I don’t want anything special - just a return to normality.

Coming towards the end of my stay in Burgundy, this just after tasting at Drouhin.

On – Wine

Twenty-twenty has been a tough year for everyone. It has been a year of just getting through the day, the week, the year by keeping safe, keeping sane. My lifebuoy of optimism, kept afloat by the rollout of vaccines, is currently threatened by a virus mutation, festering in the area I live. Consequently, we enter another soul-sapping lockdown that snuffed out all our plans for the festive season. Hard weeks lay ahead. But I cling to the idea that next year will see the first buds of a return to normal, accompanied by newfound appreciation of the many things we were deprived of in 2020. Roll on 2021.

Wine of the Year

2010 Domaine Jean-François Coche-Dury - Meursault Rougeots

It wasn’t that this beauty was firing on all cylinders or that it is rare or that it was a third of the market price at Pot d’Etain. It was simply the relief, the thrill of enjoying fine wine after weeks in isolation. It was a bit of my old life returning. Plus it tasted bloody amazing.

Value For Money White

2017 António Madeira Vinhas Velhas Branco

This live wire Vinhas Velhas blew me away when I ordered it from the list at Elystan Street restaurant in the summer. Cheap as chips (and delicious).

Value For Money Red

2010 La Rioja Alta Viña Ardanza Selección Especial Rioja Reserva

This Rioja gem was so fantastic that I immediately declared, in my best Withnail accent, that I would be drinking the entire bottle, a rare occurrence these days.