Heavenly Twins

Some time back in the spring - the dates are bobbing about a bit, but I thought I'd like to share the cartoon, anyway. Earlier this year half a dozen regular DECANTER contributors were asked to choose their 'desert island wine': the one wine they could choose to drink happily for the rest of their lives if they had to. Quite a few people chose vintage Champagne, although they didn't reveal how they'd store it or chill it on a desert island. My own response was unequivocal and rooted in practicality:

There is no contest here. It would have to be a wine which goes with every kind of food, which could be enjoyed at any reasonable temperature, ambient or chilled, which wouldn't go 'off' and which didn't need kid-glove treatment to show at its best. I'm talking about the world's finest wine, of course: Sherry, and particularly a dry Amontillado. I'd have to select the cabeceo myself to make sure that it really was a solera-aged Fino and not the 'medium' blended stuff which masquerades under the name in so much of the UK trade, and I think something with an average age of about 15-20 years would hit the spot. As a child, from the age of about 12, I was allowed a very small glass of Sherry once a year on Christmas morning. It was probably to get me back to sleep, but the magic of those moments has never left me.

By chance, the charming Sarah Jane Evans, quite independently, chose exactly the same wine. The magazine decided to illustrate the piece not with our usual mugshots but with a cartoon, which Sarah Jane dubbed 'The Heavenly Twins'. I insist that I'm not that fat, although Jill says I am!

Cartoon by Chris Burke - www.chrisburke.org.uk