Michael Barclay and CJR better not google “Auberon Waugh wine column”

THE TORONTO STAR, CANADA’S LARGEST PAPER, on Friday published a column suggesting wines to pair with films from previous years of the Toronto International Film Festival, which opened on September 7.

But really? A wine pairing for 12 Years A Slave?

Har!

His secretary prepared forms we had to fill in as we went along and we would compete to come up with the most ridiculous descriptive phrases. None could match his own, of course. Not content with writing winsomely about ‘cut grass’ or ‘blackcurrant sorbet’ he found himself in a degree of trouble (Press Complaints Commission) when he compared one wine to ‘a bunch of dead chrysanthemums on the grave of a stillborn West Indian baby’.

One of the great phrases.

I do envy wine and perfume writers and their facility with words, which approaches synethesia.