Bordeaux 2004 at Ten Years
I settled back into one of the wall-seats in the Prufrock Café, in London’s Leather Lane, at least as much as one can ‘settle’ into a seat that consists of a hard wooden bench, the only support offered to my back the brick wall behind. I had an hour to kill before the doors of today’s tasting were to be flung open, and it seemed clear to me at the time – having risen very early to journey down to London – that I needed a coffee to kick-start my brain and my palate into action before I even dared look at a wine today.
Prufrock Café has, judging by this brief visit, only two types of clientele. First, there are the people with laptops, stopping off for an eye-opener on the way to work, and using the time to kill off a few emails before they hit the office. Or, for all I know, maybe this is their office. The second group are the hipsters, and these are far greater in number than the laptop users. The bushy-beard count in the Prufrock Café was very high that day, and the combined skinny-jeans and hipster-frames index was totally off the charts. And as I watched, waiting for my cappuccino and almond croissant to arrive, more of their brethren appeared, carefully lining up their Penny Farthing bicycles outside, pouring in as a paradoxical swarm of individuals, each here for a fix of their favourite coffee-that-isn’t-Starbucks.
