On what was going to be a significant travel day I knew I needed an early start, and was out of bed shortly after five-thirty, taping out the next tract of Travelogue. Hardly surprising, really. If I was awake, that was the default task, but in this case there was an extra element that needed to come into play. The right side corner of the balcony at the front of the hotel room contained a bathtub, and I had visions of giving myself a long hot morning soak and watching the sunrise hit a fairly spectacular view across Matsumoto towards the Japanese Alps.
On that basis, I definitely wanted to be on deck early, and the Travelogue tapping served to fill in time until it was time to fill the tub. It was just after six when I roused Madam, and if that sounds a bit rough, I was under strict instructions not to set out on the operation without assistance or supervision.
I’d managed to get the Travelogue (note form, detail to be padded out later) up to date before that, and with the horizon still in darkness I resisted the temptation to get an early start on the tub task, and let sleeping partners lie.
I’d been intrigued by vinous matters the night before, and wandered into the resort’s retail section looking for the red and white they’d been serving in the restaurant. I’d managed to identify them as Concord and Niagara, and having shelled out for an expensive and authoritative reference tome thought this was the perfect time to bring it into play.
And, of course, it would mean Madam got a good ten minutes extra sleep.
Ten minutes might seem an overgenerous time allocation, but while I could remember the Concord, The search was complicated by the fact that I couldn't remember the name of the other variety. The Jancis Robinson tome, however, had the grape varieties listed in various configurations, including country of origin, and I had vague memories that the white definitely sounded American.
As it turned out t’other one was Niagara, which fitted nicely with those vague memories, and my research revealed both were grown for the table as well as the wine press, and the process brought back memories of references to something called Sparkling Concord somewhere back in the seventies or early eighties. For some reason, the name had lodged itself in the memory bank in the exact way that the much shorter term recollection of Niagara hadn’t.