#32: Luxembourg

Year: 2015
Grapes: Rivaner (Müller-Thurgau)
Producer: Domaine Mathis Bastian
Alcohol: 12%
Source: Richard & Linda Savory, Chris’s parents

It’s 2.15 on a decidedly autumnal Saturday afternoon, and I’m sitting on our sofa with a cup of tea, my laptop, and the cat. As I do so, my West Hampstead team-mates are heading out onto the hockey pitch for the second of three pre-season friendlies before league matches get underway on September 30^th.

I’m itching to join them – to rinse out my gumshield, strap on my shinpads, and start yelling at people from centre-back again – but our wedding is now just a fortnight away; given that I expect to have my face photographed more there over the course of 8-10 hours than it has been in the last decade, it seemed sensible to skip the warm-up games this time. In 22 years (and 350+ matches) of senior hockey, I’ve been remarkably fortunate when it comes to disfiguring injuries – a fractured tooth back in 2012 was about the worst of it – but this feels like the wrong moment to tempt fate.

Still, it’s not often that hockey takes a back seat in my life. Ever since I started running around a bobbly grass pitch on Sunday mornings with the West Witney ‘Sticklers’ at the age of 10, it’s been a constant feature of my weekends from mid-September through to the beginning of April. I play hockey on leaf-strewn pitches in late October, when the blustery chill in the air carries the smell of bonfires from the gardens and allotments of whichever Home Counties town we’re visiting.  I play on freezing cold December mornings, when your fingers tingle every time you hit the ball and your breath follows you across the astroturf like a jet trail. I play in March, when the Spring sunshine feels like both a beginning and an end, giving us all renewed vigour and a sense of joy, just as the season is winding down.

I play hockey not because I’m good at it – anyone who’s seen me try to dribble the ball out of defence or hit it on the reverse stick will immediately attest to that – but because of the continuity, camaraderie, and competition it provides. The rhythm and culture of organised team sport can endure season after season of personnel change, and is largely identifiable even when moving from one club to another – from Witney to Oxford to West Hampstead (via Christ Church, Ustinov College and Sokół Warszawa), in my case. Immerse yourself in that culture for long enough, learn its language, and it becomes just another part of your kit bag to dust off once September rolls round again. It helps if you like your team-mates, of course (and right now I do), but even that is a bonus rather than a requirement; there is enough binding you together on the pitch every week to cut through most personality clashes or lack of common ground in the bar afterwards.

In that sense, a shared purpose is invaluable, though at the level I play these days (Middlesex, Berks, Bucks & Oxon League: Division 5, if you please) the focus on winning is always diluted somewhat by the realisation that we’re not exactly competing for the highest stakes. It makes for a nice balance, in some ways: you go as hard as you can for 70 minutes on the pitch each week, and celebrate the victories when they come, but it’s rare that a defeat stings for longer than it takes to shower off the sweat or sink your first beer. Or maybe that’s just called ‘getting older’…

Either way, I think I enjoy the game on its own terms much more now than I did 10 years ago. It’s not that I’m less competitive – far from it – more that I’m better at keeping things in context. And that’s great, because hockey is a kinetic, exciting, brilliant sport, played at an increasingly high level as pitches and stick technology improve. It combines strategy and skill, organisation and instinct, decision-making and pure athleticism, and I love it for all those reasons and more. Anyone whose experience of hockey is limited to miserable school PE lessons on muddy pitches in the biting wind ought to check out a game on TV – or, even better, grab some tickets for next year’s World Cup in London, and see most of Great Britain’s Olympic champions in action.

Hockey has evolved so much in the time I’ve been playing, and will continue to do so long after I’ve hung up my stick and boots, I’m sure. Not that I’m planning to call it a day any time soon. Whether or not I have another 22 seasons left in me is something my knees and back will probably dictate (not to mention fatherhood and who knows what other grown-up responsibilities!), but my old captain at Witney, Richard Pollard, played all the way through to his mid-60s, so I’m not ruling it out. After all, hockey isn’t just a hobby or a way to keep fit: it’s a thread running right through from my childhood to now, and I hope it will keep unspooling for many years to come.

Wine Info

Mathis Bastian is a wine-maker from Luxembourg’s Moselle valley. He and his daughter, Anouk, produce wines that respect the individuality of the terroir by using grapes from low-yield harvest to give freshness and elegance.

From the producer’s website:

Our Rivaner has very typical blackcurrant aromas. An easy-drinking wine, it is perfect to enjoy young. An excellent accompaniment to traditional Luxembourg fare.

From Hannibal Brown:

This wine displays a bright nose with delicate aromas of greengage and grapefruit. Lively and refreshing on the palate with balanced acidity and a slight off-dry finish make this the perfect aperitif wine.

Wine Verdict

Chris

Quite by chance, this turned out to be a very good roast chicken wine! Appropriate, given its source – my mum’s roast chicken dinners remain the best around, in my totally unbiased opinion. The Rivaner is light and fresh, but with a creaminess to back it up, and a hint of lemon coming through after the first hit of alcohol. There’s also something a bit herby on the nose, though I can’t narrow it down any further than that.

More than anything, it reminds me of some of the really tasty German whites I used to drink in Warsaw, which is where I first encountered Silvaner (a close relative of Rivaner/Müller-Thurgau). Luxembourg may not make much wine, but there’s clearly no issue with the quality of the bottles it does produce.

7/10

Livvy

This wine worked really well with the roast chicken we had for supper. It was light and fresh, and had a citrusy flavour that cut through the soft chicken really nicely! Its freshness was almost fizzy, and came with a touch of sharpness, but made for a very drinkable result. I couldn’t make out any specific aromas, apart from the fact that it smelled very winey and delicious!

All in all, I really liked it! As a rule, I don’t enjoy the sharpness of wine like this as much as the buttery, creamy ones so haven’t given it as high a score as perhaps it deserves, but it is clearly very good nonetheless!

7.5/10, smooth and delicious