Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
grimage to Masham, taking in York and Castle Howard en route. Later a contingent of
us London-living Scots would meet Les and a few other Scotland-based pals halfway, in
York, again to sample the delights of Masham's finest product.
Well, things change; we went back to Lamb's Conduit Street a few years ago on one
of our infrequent trips to London, but the Sun was no longer the mazily eccentric real-
ale nirvana it had been back in the early eighties; just another pleasant, open, sensibly
laid out café-like bar with too many alcopops and flavoured vodkas. And OP isn't what
it was either, changed long ago into a less powerful formulation and made in Carlisle,
not Masham; still a fine beer, but not the mad, bad, brilliant stuff of near hallucinogen-
ic power it once was. One of the Theakston family fell out with the others and started
brewing another beer, back in Masham. You could tell he'd fallen out with the rest of the
family because he called this new real ale Black Sheep (itself a fine pint, but no Old P.).
Masham, on the other hand, seems only to have changed for the better. The first
couple of times I went it felt a bit too quiet and sleepy; now it appears more lively, without
being exactly frenetic (though it positively bustles on market day). Set in beautiful rolling
Yorkshire scenery Masham is full of Good Things, like the White Bear Inn (which ap-
pears to have some connection to Jethro Tull, a band I still have a real soft spot for), sev-
eral other great pubs, the old brewery, the King's Head Hotel, not one but two brilliant
delicatessen/sweet shops, some interesting craft outlets, the wide central square where the
market still takes place, and the Floodlite restaurant. Which brings us back to that first
bottle of Grange.
In 1995 I decided Ann and I ought to start a new tradition of going to Masham every
April, as close as possible to the anniversary of that first date, to drink at least one pint
of Old Peculier. The first time we went we stayed at the King's Head Hotel and on the
second night ate out, at the Floodlite, which was one of those instant finds, where you
immediately know you've stumbled on to something special; just amazingly good food.
Plus it had a bottle of Ozzie plonk on the wine list for 75 quid. I'd decided a few years
earlier that I was a real fan of the way Australian wine tasted in general compared to most
French reds, plus I'd just had a royalty cheque and was therefore feeling relatively flush,
so, though I'd never heard of this Penfolds Grange Bin 95, I stopped and thought about
it.
I remember thinking that 75 was an awful lot of money to spend on a red that wasn't
a Bordeaux, but I felt kind of encouraged by the quality of the food in Floodlite and the
fact that everything else on the menu and the wine list seemed reasonably priced; maybe
this 1989 Bin 95 stuff was entirely worth the money. So we ordered a bottle. It became
my favourite wine from the first mouthful.
I started looking out for it. I began, when we were going posh, to choose restaurants
largely according to whether they had Grange on the wine list or not (so that, in London,
