wine bar

To get to the barn that houses the main retail area of the wine bar you have to cross the courtyard out back. When the weather is mild, the courtyard is also a pleasant place to sit and enjoy a glass of wine.  In the far corner of the courtyard there is a large table fashioned out of an old French door painted blue and mounted on rod iron trestle legs.  It is large enough to seat ten comfortably.  In fact it may seat ten too comfortably, which would at least partially explain its evil influence.  For when one sits at the recently christened Witches’ Table, one rarely leaves the wine bar sober.

Husband and I fell under the spell of the Witches’ Table earlier in the summer at the sardine bbq.  This is the only explanation I have for the ten strips of raffle tickets (charity unknown, but I can safely assume it was for a good cause) and the small cut above my eyebrow that were in my possession when I awoke the next morning.  I do recall that the occupants of the Witches’ Table that afternoon came up with an excellent outline for a panto we intended to stage at the village hall in winter: a mash-up of “Sin”-derella and Priscilla Queen of the Desert of the Cotswolds in which the struggle is to get Cinders to Pippa and Prince Harry’s wedding at the local inn (at which there was no room according to husband’s diligent BlackBerry notes and in an apparent misguided effort to weave in the Christmas story).  I believe this falls safely into the category of it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time.  More recently the Witches’ Table cast its evil influence on one half of doppelgänger couple when, after an evening of wine and a misjudged shot of absinthe, he forcibly ejected the contents of his digestive tract via his mouth into the adjacent well.  Thus forth it has been known as Crispin’s well.

On Tuesday evening we decided to brave another session at the Witches’ Table with the fairer half of doppelgänger couple (Crispin was still hanging his head in shame from the well incident).  We had dinner reservations in half an hour and so, we assumed, there was no time for anything to go too far off the rails.  The table was already in session when we joined, populated by seven of the usual suspects.  Things got off to a safe start with a vigorous debate about the proper use of semi-colons that swiftly moved into a vigorous debate over the etiquette of turning an empty wine bottle upside down in its ice bucket.  (In the end we agreed it was ok, as long as it wasn’t in somebody’s house.)  Things generally proceeded in this vein of polite banter, with the small exception of when our local Roger Moore lookalike stood up to pour some wine and I complimented his arrowhead belt buckle, causing the entire table to look in the general direction of his crotch.  In the end we had an unintended second bottle of wine and were an hour late for our table, which on balance is an excellent outcome for an evening at the Witches’ Table.

Wednesday night was R.’s last regular gig behind the wine bar. He’s been in love for about a year now, and he’s finally packing his bags and heading for Shropshire to move in with his lady love. It’s been fun to watch a sixty-nine year old grin like a schoolboy each time he talks about his girlfriend, who is an old flame reignited. Still, I am sad to see him go.

R. has been around since the start of our Cotswoldian epic, and fifteen or twenty years before that at the wine bar. I think of him as our Cotswolds welcome wagon, introducing us to many of our now friends for the first time in his assumed role as host of the town cocktail party, which is how the wine bar feels on its best evenings. He can be a prickly character if he doesn’t like you, but, luckily for husband and me, he has fond memories of working in America and seemed glad to have an American around with whom he could reminisce and talk politics (even if those politics were a million miles away from mine). He’s also ruddy faced, a bit deaf, stubborn, opinionated and very generous. I can’t count the number of times he’s treated us to a glass of wine despite our protests. Oh, and he loves the devilled kidneys at the Wheatsheaf.

I’ve blogged about him before, like how he refused to learn to operate the fancy cappuccino machine when it was first installed at the wine bar, insisting that “the girls” do that. More than a year later he has now mastered the steaming, spurting chrome beast and is rather proud of his barista skills. I’ll miss his coffees and his banter and most of all him, although he is promising to make guest appearances behind the bar now and then.

Friday was the Fat Boys lunch, an event husband had been invited to by M. and for which I had been enlisted as a chauffeur. Husband was titillated by his inclusion and spent the morning weighing his clothing options aloud like a teenage girl anguishing over her prom dress. Coral coloured cashmere sweater vest or tweed blazer? Was his sheepskin coat too “urban”?

The arrangement was to meet at the wine bar at noon. At 12:30PM husband was just wrapping up a call so I was dispatched to the wine bar on my own to stall for him. I used the time to enquire about the etymology of the lunch’s name since the attendees, while not in danger of anorexia, were neither overtly fat nor boys. A., a local writer who resembled Paul Bunyan in his leather waistcoat, attempted to explain as he poured me half a glass of champagne (I was the driver after all). The account was delivered in an authoritative and confident voice that tricked me into believing it was a coherent response, a common characteristic of the posh spoken. There was something about Oxford and self-employment and a loose association with the arts, but it took some prodding before I was finally able to work out that the most important qualification was that you didn’t have to go back to the office afterward. As A. commented in a moment of unusual lucidity, “I’ve always thought if you don’t have it done by Friday lunchtime, you’re unlikely to get it done by the end of the day anyway.”

Overall the explanation had a bit of machismo, chest beating pride on behalf of the assembled guests, who included a magazine editor, the publisher of a local newspaper, writers, and a former military man turned vintner. Husband in fact is in the employ of someone else who might reasonably expect to be able to reach him on Friday afternoon, but seemed to qualify on the basis of his employer’s association with the the-uh-tah and possibly because I drive a station wagon which M. suspected he could persuade me to chauffeur. But all these men shared at least the illusion of being in charge of their own destiny for this particular afternoon, and they were going to spend it drinking copious amounts.

Husband materialised (having chosen coral cashmere) and, after a case of wine was loaded into the trunk of the car, we were off. The brief journey to the pub was no cause for a respite in gossip. A story about how the ex-wife of one of the Fat Boys had a lover in common with Princess Di (presumably the reason she is now an ex) was my reward before depositing my charges at the door of the pub.

The call to retrieve them came five hours later. When I arrived they were on whiskey and cognac and there was no sign of the case of wine. One suede loafered man was wondering around with a half empty bottle of port, and the ex-army officer turned winemaker was telling me how he was shocked to learn over lunch that I stripped my way through college to pay the bills. After an aborted attempt to find someone from Suffolk presumed to still be in the pub, I managed to herd them into my car and back to the wine bar where the man from Suffolk had already made his way.

The scene that followed was much as you might expect after a dozen men have spent five hours drinking champagne, beer, red wine, port and whiskey. M. kept falling into a coat rack. His ex-wife did not look amused, and was not her same warm, friendly self towards me. I imagined she was rather horrified husband seemed to have fallen in with this crew and assumed our marriage was headed for the same eventual destiny as her own. Husband mistook a request for his last name from a fellow fat boy attendee as some kind of insult, then insisted his response was meant to be “a joke.” The man from Suffolk kept telling me his life was a mess — just back after ten years in Japan, freshly divorced and with two kids — all of which seemed incongruent since he reminded me of the gay, lecherous Uncle Monty from Withnail and I from the moment I first saw him.

It seemed best to dissociate myself from the fat boys, so I mingled. The most amusing of my new acquaintances was a portly man of about sixty who was a good six inches shorter than me with thick, black-rimmed glasses on a cord, horrible teeth, and a very posh accent. When I asked him what he did he said, “My dear, I own Farmington,” which is the village up the hill from us. Twice he told me I had a very red nose, which is true, and twice that he’d just as soon comment on my body as my nose but he couldn’t see it underneath my coat. Despite his behaviour which I suppose could be construed as piggish, I found him entertaining and was half tempted to drop the coat and strike a pose. All the better that I didn’t seeing that his wife was losing her patience at his refusal to leave the wine bar and go to dinner. His defense was that he wasn’t leaving with a bloody half bottle of wine left. She barked orders at him like he was a naughty dog, which I suspect was deserved, and finally he made his exit. Husband had apparently had his fill of being a man in charge of his own destiny and offered no resistance when I told him it was time to go, using the age old lure of sausage, chips and curry from the Chinese takeaway across the square.

The changes to the wine bar promised back in August are starting to come to fruition. A handsome new bar made from varnished wine crates has been installed up front, and last week an impressive piece of machinery materialised on its far left corner. Said machine looks capable of dispensing serious caffeinated beverages. I am very excited. The other offerings in town are, well, no Starbucks.

Saturday morning I stopped by for an inaugural cappuccino. R. the barman was manning the shop.

“I see you have a new toy,” I said, gesturing to the chrome beauty.

“Hrmphh,” he grunted, rolling his eyes in the direction of the beast. “I don’t agree with that AT ALL,” he went on as if we were discussing stem cell research or new taxes.

My heart sank a little bit. I could see where this was going.

“Do you know how to use it?” I asked cheerily.

“I am leaving that to the girls,” he responded, referring to T. and the two Es, none of whom were on duty. “Can I get you something else?” he asked earnestly, as if I might consider a glass of Gamay at 10:00AM.

I got the impression he wanted me to stay for a chat, although obviously not enough to learn how to use the coffee machine. In its new configuration the bar does remind me just a little bit of Bar Le Louis IX , where we used to go for café crème and croissants after a jog around the Île Saint- Louis. Despite the croissants we always felt like conspicuous health freaks compared to the jumpsuited municipal workers capping their breakfast with a marc. I’ll skip the drink but stay for a chat. We have a whole presidential election to dissect.