Dancing in Dalston

Jude and I go dancing in Dalston, with a magnum of Henri Milan Grand Blanc.  By Kate

Recently, Jude and I went clubbing.  That is not a sentence that gets written or said, much less performed, with anything like regularity in this household; but we did.   It was a bank holiday weekend which meant that both of us could get up slightly later for work on the Monday.  And it felt like it was almost summer - a cause for profound celebration.

 Having said that the day, when it dawned, was resolutely non-summery so my eventual outfit was a bizarre mix of summery hippy/wintery bag lady.  We met first at the flat of Amit and Katie, brandishing a magnum of Henri Milan Blanc that Jude had been saving for a special occasion.  The two of us managing a night out was certainly that. 

Amit then produced something extraordinary – the Pink Bulles I had described finding at the Real Wine tasting in this blog a few weeks ago.  There never was a wine more made for festivities – it is a gorgeous onion skin pink, it has bracing, brilliant acidity and faintly perfumed red fruit and it almost instantly cheers you up.  If you are already cheerful it makes you want to throw your hands in the air and whoop.

 I knew that there was hardly any of this wonderful stuff in the UK, so to find a bottle chilled and ready to drink, in East London on a Sunday night was a very special clubbing miracle.   Amit went even further and produced other extraordinary bottles described in the same blog, but nothing matched the extraordinarily appropriate deliciousness of the Bulles.   Thank you very much Mr P.

 We had to eventually mount taxis which took us far, far away into reaches of the East hitherto unknown to Westerners such as ourselves.    It really felt like the middle of complete nowhere.  And then having been dropped in the middle of nowhere we proceeded to head still further into the heart of it until we came to a relatively ramshackle industrial type building with a yard overgrown with weeds and what appeared to be junk strewn in front of it.  Two very nice security men pointed the way and then we were in. 

Into a big concrete shell with a bar against one wall and some gauzy curtains hung round what would eventually be the dance floor.  There was a DJ setting up a trestle table and speakers but most of all there was a young man dressed (impressively accurately) as a 1950’s jazz hipster: he was dancing in the middle of the floor to what sounded like 1950’s jazz, wearing a dreamy expression.

 It was incredibly cold.  Even with my bag lady layers, my summer hippy side was feeling it.  We moved over to a stack of speakers near the DJ, past Jazzy Jeff who at that point was liberally sprinkling talcum powder all over the badly pothold concrete floor.    I have never found out why they do that on dance floors but I really must.  It really isn’t terribly good for the look of one’s shoes, so I am hoping there is an amazingly important logistical reason for it. 

The only real solution to the problem of temperature was to dance, so we did.  Well, at first only Amit, Rebecca and I did but then Jude joined in and soon we had a little party.  Which turned into a bigger party.  There was a large range of people there, a decent representation of different ages although most were in their 20’s; some very casual people and some who had made a definite effort to dress up.  My favourite was a lady who was dressed like a children’s cartoon character who had decided to go to a club in a warehouse in Dalston.  She looked very fabulous.

 It was very good dancing and although every now and then there was a song which simply did not resonate at all in my soul, on the whole it was well above average.  Jude did try to explain the deep and abiding affection for Ian Drury that was clearly in evidence through the clouds of Talc,  but for me, he has no place on the dance floor.  

On the whole though,  it was everything that an evening like this should be – lots of very good, fun exercise, endless people to watch and great amounts of joyousness.

 And then, an even more wonderful thing happened.  After much fiddling and fussing around and the organising of receptacles for everyone (in the main these were empty mineral water bottles), the magnum of Henri Milan was opened just to the left of the speaker and poured, viscous and golden.

 It happened to be in the middle of a particularly funky, piece of music with a heavy bass line and  the now packed dance floor was moving like a  boisterous, thousand-limbed creature: We stood, moving slightly, jostled by the creature; a small collective of wine tasters at a club, and took sips.

 It really was completely delicious.  The rich, almost slightly smoky undertone of the wine matched the music perfectly and the lighter, floral top notes and delicious acidity were the taste of festivity. 

“Biodynamic” squealed Rebecca, flinging her arms dramatically in the air as she fully rejoined the mass.  If Biodynamic is ultimately all about the energy generated and if it is true that, in the best examples, some of that energy will escape like magic gas when the bottle is opened, suffusing an event, then this was indeed happening here. 

“I think Henri Milan would be very happy if he knew where this was being drunk here and now,” Jude shouted at me over the noise.  I think he would actually.  The plastic bottles were less than ideal but not even these could ruin how good the wine was.  Or indeed the whole experience.

 We left shortly afterwards. After all, there was work to be done the next day.  Apparently the party continued till the middle of the next morning and we are now dreaming of the day when we will be able to stay to the very end.  It might be a while, but the dream is there.  A whole evening of the very best dancing fuelled by the alchemy of the most natural of wines.  Perfect.