Charlie Geoghegan writes Charlie Geoghegan is a writer, editor and marketer from Dublin. He lives in London, where he is Senior Copywriter at Berry Bros. & Rudd. His wine writing has been published by Decanter and the Wine Scholar Guild. In 2025 he was a finalist in the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Award for Short-Form Writing. He was a Fellow at the 2026 Napa Valley Wine Writers’ Symposium. He holds the WSET Level 4 Diploma as well as the Italian Wine Scholar and Bordeaux Master-Level qualifications from the Wine Scholar Guild. Outside of wine he also writes fiction and non-fiction.
Out of time
I never did get around to fixing these old stairs, my love. Rickety as ever, I’m afraid, but not to worry now. I can barely hear the creaks over the radio from the kitchen, anyway. Down I go and crikey, it’s positively chilly. The heating is on full blast up in the house, you see — I know, I know, but I’m old and cold and what’s the harm, really? It’s naturally twelve degrees down here, and nicely humid. Hammersmith is not exactly Reims, but surely there are worse places to store a lifetime’s worth of wine.
What shall it be tonight, then? Bordeaux feels appropriate. I would suggest our anniversary vintage, but why make this more painful than necessary? Nobody needs another 1974 Claret. Dusty, thin rubbish. If only I’d known what those ’82s would end up being worth, I’d have bought twice as much. It didn’t feel right to sell them, but we always said they were for Sarah, and the buyer was offering silly money. And it helped her get the house in the Cotswolds, at least. I really thought that was a phase, a young woman living like that, alone, in the middle of nowhere. Her ‘forever home’, she called it. Seems such a silly thought now, but mustn’t make light of these things. Her life, not mine, I know.
Funny, I never did get back down to Bordeaux. Your little itinerary is still on the fridge: Le Médoc, Juillet 2005, your perfect handwriting. You were already worse at that stage than you’d been letting on, of course. Far worse. Another couple of months and you wouldn’t have been able to fly. I get cross with you sometimes, that you didn’t tell me. Furious, actually. I’m sorry, but I do. Letting me prattle on about bloody tannins and barrels for three days straight. Oh well.
I’m running my finger over the wooden cases now, feeling the little grooves: the gates, the heraldry, the whole lot. Names like Barton and Lynch, your ancient countrymen. I consider an Haut-Bages-Libéral. I’ve always liked saying that one out loud, even though you used to tease me for my schoolboy French, how I’d over-enunciate each syllable. ‘Lib-err-al.’ Alas it’s a 2022 and that’s definitely too young. I’m starting to think that Claret just has a little too much baggage; best look elsewhere. The rack has gotten bigger, as tall as me and twice as wide — and yes, yes, I’ve gotten a little wider, too. Fractionally. Just how does one accumulate quite so much wine, though? The foil capsules resemble a psychedelic game of Battleship. Just the one player now, of course, not much good to anybody. Something baby-blue catches my eye. Rieslings, from Robert Weil in the Rheingau. Two Kabinetts and an Eiswein. Dry, sweet or one of each? It’s just me tonight, so should probably cap it at the one.
Mind you, it’s not like I’ve got somewhere to be tomorrow, and these are barely six or seven percent alcohol. I wonder what you’d have made of this whole moderation business, actually. Even one bottle is considered quite a lot nowadays, and I do at least two days a week without so much as an apéritif, if you’d believe that. Not doctor’s orders, exactly, though not far off. An eighty-four-year-old man needs to look after himself, even if he’s never been sick a day in his life. Then again, you always looked after yourself, and fifty-two is no age at all. No, moderation is the last thing on my mind tonight. There’s nothing to stop me opening a magnum, maybe that Marqués de Riscal from Christie’s. Even better: the double-magnum of Opus One. It would’ve made a great centrepiece if only there’d been an occasion special enough. Never mind, I’d have a hard time lugging that up the stairs anyway.
I’ve still got a few Lafon Meursaults, though the last one I opened was shot to pieces. Premox, my Justerini’s man told me. Premature oxidation. Now there’s a thought. Is that what’s in store for us tonight, is that how it happens? It’s hardly premature in my case, I suppose, I’ve lived a life. But there are nine million people in London, not counting however many have tried to get away — not that you’d get far at this notice. Number Ten only made the announcement an hour ago, and then the phone networks went down and then the internet. I’d have barely made it to Chiswick. But I have everything I need here, anyway: the gas, water and electricity are still going; small mercies. And I’ve got all the wine in the world. Speaking of, I really need to choose something.
Burgundy is too hit-and-miss. I start pulling out bottles at random, looking for something, anything, that feels à point. The wine to toast the end of the world. Or the end, at least, of life as we know it in the South of England. An expected yield a thousand times the size of Hiroshima, the announcement said. What goes with that? I’ve got some Hermitage, a stray Barolo from Vajra, a bottle of Penfolds. Not Grange, one of the other good ones; I never know which is which. Damn, I’ve left it too late for anything I’ll need to decant. Damn damn damn. I don’t think I can do this. You were always better in a crisis; what would you choose?
‘Don’t worry about it now, love, you’re alright.’
Ah, there you are now, top of the stairs; when did you get here? They said impact’s not ’til eight. You’re early. We’re sitting outside that bar in St Julien-Beychevelle and you’re rocking baby Sarah and we’re holding hands in Holland Park and we’re dancing after dinner on the eleventh of May 1974. Then the light is flickering and it goes out and the radio must’ve stopped because I can hear it again, the siren. It’s wailing and deafening and blinding and we must be out of time.
Published unedited and in accordance with the rules of the competition published here.
