The couple who own San Polino go beyond standard biodynamics and practise what they call ‘deep vitiforesty’. This is where they map and encourage the growth of mycorrhizal fungi to integrate the vineyards with the surrounding forests.

Why? I would guess to limit the fertility of the vines and so encourage better-quality fruit. This is a guess, as limit of my knowledge about mycorrhizal fungi pertains to fungal root disease in Alaska. There is no fungal root disease in Alaska (at least not the last time I checked, in 1995).

Brunello di Montalcino Helichrysum 2016, San Polino

I double-decanted this an hour before drinking and had a quick taste. Bof! It is a bit of a brute structure-wise, but there are some beautiful flavours swirling in there. I stuck it in the fridge whilst it was breathing as its 14.5% does not need encouraging.

An hour later. The nose has really opened up and is charged with a very complex array of herbal aromas intertwined with big, fat, juicy, black cherry fruit. Really bright and vibrant. Yum, that is rather lamprotic, love the intensity!

I did not have to worry about the alcohol being overt, at least when slightly chilled, it is perfectly in balance with the pulchral fruit and delightful, involute, phytic character. This is a direct communication with top Brunello terroir – I feel proximate to the vineyard – and seriously high-quality, ceraceous Sangiovese fruit. What is not to love?

At ten years old, with a double decant, this is quite open for business and iridal with complexity – I am already thinking about when I am going to ravish my next bottle! Pleasingly (dare I say ‘surprisingly’) for an Italian wine, age has barely conferred any acetic character to it and it is diaphanous‑pure in its communication smartly attired class. That is a great, great Brunello nose!

So, a taste! Wow, remarkably silken and svelte for a wine that has such pronounced structure (strʌk tʃər). A bit behind the nose in terms of its morphogenesis, but I am terribly happy to be enjoying this bottle right now.

Extremely baccate, not missing a gram of fruit after ten years, and that fruit is perfectly ripe with a fine balance between sweetness and refreshing acidity. One would have to have some diseased aversion to pleasure if you failed to love this.

It is extremely long as I swallow – fructuous, sativous and mineral at the same time. Fulgid complexity burns. This is giving me an unhindered connection to the fruit and vineyard and, my, what serious things they are! This is the cat’s arse, and no mistake.

If you give this a decant, there is no problem with pleasuring yourself immensely with a bottle of this now. Equally well, there is no rush at all, you will be well-satisfied by this wine for years to come.

Looking on Wine Searcher, it is quite easy to buy this wine for under £45 a bottle in bond (if you buy a six-pack). Given the exigent nature of buying fine wine these days (and just living in general, to be honest), that is a serious bargain. Cripes, such quality… If you can afford a six-pack (that I, alas, cannot), there are much, much less sensible options to elate yourself with. Tasting this has compelled and inspired me.

It is the day after I wrote the above, it is a bit aporetic… A bit too tortuous, really. I was somewhat pissed and, as I said, I was compelled and inspired by the wine to make an effort. I made too much of an effort. I am too stressed today to re-write it, so please accept my apologies for being too rebarbative.

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Four of us dined at La Trompette in Chiswick. I have written about the food there only recently and shall not cover it again. It was characteristically excellent. I think we did a better job of ordering food to match the wine.

Once again, they offered us a fixed price for two starters, a main, dessert and service. Once again, the experience was superb.

I feel very blessed to have dear friends with whom I can share the ups and downs of life, as well as wonderful food and wine. So let us count our blessings.

Champagne Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Les Mottelettes 2018, Pierre Paillard

12.5% abv. Pale-ish colour. Bright, engaging nose with super energy.

On the palate the energy continues. There is line to it, but also a little breadth. This is not self-indulgently grower-y, nor is it linear. My handwritten notes say “precision and lightness”.

Someone at the table commented that they could not imagine having a friend without a favourite Champagne village. The truth is I do not have one. I kept my head down and smiled. I hope I was not found out.

There is a nuttiness in the mid and end palate. I am told this is a classic Montagne de Reims Chardonnay character.

Something profoundly life affirming and harmonious lives in this wine. Proper kit. An appropriate start for our dinner.

The vines were planted in 1961. This is aged in barrel. This vintage is zero dosage, which sparked some conversation at the table as to whether it tastes zero dosage.

I am quite convinced it is virtually impossible to tell by tasting the level of dosage in a Champagne to any finer than 4 or 5 g/l. The excellent book Liquid Intelligence by Dave Arnold has a whole chapter on how unreliable our sweetness perception is.

What seems to be true is that zero or very low dosage champagnes tend to fall off quicker. This has a ton of energy. The question is how long it has got to go.

Often with wines I love I want to see how they age. With wines such as this I suspect the real joy lies in the youthful energy and line. I should not be waiting for it to become anything other than what it is.

Chassagne-Montrachet Premier Cru les Baudines 2015, Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey

13% abv. Lemon colour. Lovely nose with some cut grass. There is a reductive note but not an aggressive one. Certainly not aggressive by this producer’s standards.

At first the palate does not quite match up to the nose for me. It has great line and balance. It is good, very good even. But somehow it does not charm.

This started some discussion about where the sweet spot in the PYCM line-up sits. My view is that the 1er Crus may be overpriced compared to the lower tiers. The Bourgogne Blanc and the villages St Aubin really deliver, especially at release prices.

After some time, these speculations were set aside. The wine started to unveil itself. Now there was a tingling of the collarbone and some real excitement.

A fellow diner said it reminded him of those days in the 1990s when Oddbins sold Ramonet. Sadly, I was not there. I applaud the sentiment. Sterling stuff.

Schist Syrah 2012, Mullineux

13.5% abv. Served blind. Purple garnet colour. A quiet nose with some heather. Burgundy or Northern Rhône?

On the palate, olives, iron filings, a tannic lick at the end. Then just a hint of sweetness. The palate definitely says Syrah.

This is so good. There is structure. There is breadth. It tells a story.

It is revealed. Ah, fantastic. This is the second time I have tasted this. Both times were with Davy.

Some discussion arose as to whether this is on the way out. I do not think so. No, no, no.

This is great. The only thing wrong with it is that I did not go long on these when BBR kept putting them on sale a few years ago.

Côte-Rôtie Maison Rouge 2012, Domaine Goerges Vernay

Hint of green apple on the nose. It is not, is it? It is, it is. Curses. Corked, corked, corked. Down the sink it goes.

This left us with a conundrum. We did not have enough red to soak up all the food we had ordered. We had a corkage deal. Fifteen minutes remained until the very good wine shop at the end of the road shut.

Shall I make a run for it? We take a look at the wine list. There is a very interesting looking Faurie. It is priced not much higher than current UK retail.

This makes tonight’s dinner a little dearer than planned. Happily, this is a group that prizes joy. We plough on.

Hermitage (white cap) 2012, Bernard Faurie

13.5% abv. Ordered off the list and popped and poured. There is something here. Green Chartreuse? I might be sensing it. It might be autosuggestion planted by Davy.

Dark fruit, cassis, density. That spherical fruit. My handwritten notes say “so long and enjoyable and marvellous”.

This is a fully complete wine, with beautifully restrained tannins. No rush to drink these, I am sure. If I had some in the cellar I would be thrilled.

My sources tell me the white cap is made with grapes from Greffieux and Bessards in Hermitage.

Monte Bello 1995, Ridge

12.5% abv. My wine, last of a six pack. So far they have been variable. Some wonderful, some merely excellent.

In one particularly sad encounter I had failed to double decant. The first 30 minutes were rather dreary, and I had set it aside. Later a fellow diner told me to retaste. My gosh, it had woken up.

I did not let such foolishness occur this time. I double decanted at home around 4pm.

Well my gosh, the wine gods smiled. FTA indeed. The best bottle of this I have tasted, I think.

On the nose, pencil lead, cedar. A hint of menthol perhaps. On the palate, lovely fruit core, dark fruits and blue fruits. The acid and the tannins play off against each other perfectly. There is a long, long finish that just keeps going. Yum yum yum.

Château d’Yquem1989

From half. Bought as part of a mixed auction lot. There were two bottles of this and this was the darker.

Incredible depth and length. A hint of marmalade bitterness at the end.

This was just on the wrong side for me. I did not finish my glass.

A thoroughly lovely dinner. Honestly, just what I needed. A healthy reminder too that joy can sometimes be found on wine lists, as well as in our cellars.

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Historically this was an iconic wine. The 1961 was famously said to surpass even the Château Latour of the same year. I am sorry to report I have tasted neither. More recent vintages I have encountered have been more than decent, but not transcendent in the way that Northern Rhône Syrah can be.

The restaurant was La Trompette in Chiswick. This is possibly my favourite restaurant in the world. The top table at our wedding was named after it. The food and service are flawless. The proprietor has a deep love of wine, and our nerdy tribe is made more than welcome by the excellent front of house staff.

Their usual offering is a prix-fixe two or three course meal. They kindly accommodated the food volume we would require for our marathon wine consumption, and gave us a deal on two starters, a main and some cheese.

Champagne Brut 2004, Dom Pérignon

This was my wine, and I was a little conflicted about bringing it. On the one hand, blingy brand names are a bit infra dig with this crowd. On the other, the only bottles of Champagne I had in the house were this, and an altogether more humble Roederer Collection 243. The Roederer is certainly very good, but I have shared bottles with most of the participants of this dinner in the past, and given the calibre of wines we were due to taste, I thought I should bring something a little more special.

On to the wine. Pale straw colour. On pouring, a little butyric grumpiness, but it soon got into shape. It has that energy and effervescence I associate with Dom, and a kind of yeasty, bready completeness. There is a sweetness to the mid-palate, but nothing cloying, more a knowing hint of richness that does not need to brag.

I always find Champagne notes harder to write than those for still white or red wine, but typing these up inspired me to buy more bottles for my cellar. Even the least champagne-focused wine aficionados at the table agreed this was a lovely wine.

Is this at its peak? I do not know. It is fully ready and very engaging, but there is still freshness. I was hoping for special, and special we got.

Salmon sashimi with pickled rhubarb dressing, white soy, crème fraîche and pistachios.

This looks like one of those light, tart ceviche dishes that have become so popular in London. It is not. It is exactly what it says it is: superb sashimi-grade salmon, with an elevated but delicate dressing that does nothing to challenge the wine and leads to a harmonious whole. Flawless.

Hermitage Blanc 180th Anniversary 1986, Domaine Chapoutier

14% abv. Marsanne. I am a Northern Rhône white sceptic. I struggle with the lack of acid. This has a deep golden colour and, on pouring, a funky nose. This blows off. There is real definition here, and slabs of butterscotch on the finish, albeit not very sweet butterscotch.

There is a character that is almost, but not quite, like skin contact. I am informed this is phenolic bitterness. There is a bitterness here, but it does not linger. There is a flinty character at the end. This is superb. A privilege and a joy to drink.

Ermitage Blanc 2018, Domaine Philippe et Vincent Jaboulet

14% abv. Roussanne. When the eponymous family domaine was sold to the Swiss Frey family in 2006, Philippe, who had previously managed the family vineyards, bought an old domaine with his son Vincent and started again.

In spite of more than forty years separating this wine and its flightmate, this is a good pairing. The colour is almost exactly the same shade of gold. There is still that lack of acid on the finish that I find off-putting. A fellow diner remarked that this “requires more stage setting than other wines.” Certainly it paired well with the food and had a lovely savoury quality.

We had some discussion about the ageability of this. If it were to follow a similar trajectory to the Chapoutier, that would be a treat indeed.

In the nineteenth century, white Hermitage was considered the equal of Le Montrachet as one of the great white wines of the world. I am still to be convinced, but I am enjoying being educated.

Crisp pork belly and black pudding terrine, caramelised apples, mustard and crackling.

This is not what I expected, although I cannot claim to have been mis-sold. I was expecting a terrine made from crisp pork belly and black pudding. What I got was pork belly with black pudding on it. It was, again, delicious. It did not exactly match what was needed at that stage of the dinner. Coming in from a cold walk on a blustery day, however, it was hard to imagine anything better.

Hermitage La Chapelle 1982, Domaine Paul Jaboulet Aîné

No abv stated. Compulsory labelling requirements were not universal at the time of bottling.

Garnet colour, with the vaguest hint of bricking. A lovely nose. Raucous, like a country pub beer garden. There is some campfire there. On the palate, a surprising forward violet character, something tight and clean in the middle, and then at the finish it starts to get a little church vestry, tea leaf.

A fellow diner commented on a Rioja-like character. I think there is also an element of the wine simply becoming old. If you have these, it is time to drink them.

Hermitage La Chapelle 1989, Domaine Paul Jaboulet Aîné

13% abv. Slightly darker, with less bricking than its flightmate. A youthful nose, violets. This is wonderful Northern Rhône Syrah, and also clearly neither Cornas nor Côte-Rôtie. This is fully composed. There is a density of material. Fruit and soil are talking. This paints a detailed picture in the mouth.

It sparked a discussion about what makes Hermitage Hermitage. Rich, sweet fruit weight and rich, spherical body was how a fellow diner described it, and I can get on board with that. If this were the best red wine you drank in your life, you would have drunk very well.

Corn-fed chicken breast, stuffed morels, crushed potatoes, baby leeks and crisp pancetta.

One of my secret shames is that I have never really figured out how to cook chicken properly. Good chicken is a treat. Getting hold of the good stuff in the UK is tough. Even when I do, it never turns out like this. Delicious, perfectly tender, the morels really set it off, and the sauce is tasty but not so rich as to overpower the delicate flavour of the chicken. It also matched the wines perfectly.

My tablemates all chose the steak and, for once, I was not jealous at all.

The wines of this flight were all from Bessards, looking out over the Rhône at the south-western corner of the hill of Hermitage.

Ermitage Le Pavillon 1990, M. Chapoutier

13.5% abv. Note the missing H. Purple garnet colour. An earthy nose with an almost baked character. The palate is complete, but ends a little short. The oak élevage is clearly perceptible. Oddly, this tasted the youngest of the flight. John Livingstone-Learmonth once ranked this as a five-star wine. It did not show like that for me, although CellarTracker notes suggest that at least some people are having exceptional bottles.

Ermitage Le Pavillon 1991, M. Chapoutier

13.5% abv. Older looking than the 1990, with some bricking. A hint of campfire on the palate. This reminds me of some 1975 clarets I tasted recently. There is a hint of volatility, and the oak, whilst less obvious, is still present. A fellow diner said “big, grunty Hermitage” and yes, it is.

It is less at ease with itself than the Chapelle. This is smoking cigarettes in a dank northern pub in the 1980s, and it knows very well how to hotwire a car. My notes capture the awkwardness of this wine, but there was a great deal about it to love. I could absolutely see why Livingstone-Learmonth awarded it a very rare six stars.

Hermitage Les Bessards 2001, Delas Frères

13% abv. The oldest looking by colour. It is odd that this flight seems to run backwards in time. There is a more lifted, energetic nose. A whiff of volatility on the palate, with lovely fruit character and strong acid at the finish. This is clearly Syrah, but of all the wines today, it is the one I would be least likely to pick out blind as Hermitage.

Three cheeses.

I was too well served at this stage to record the specific cheeses. La Trompette has one of the best cheese boards in London. Even so, I quite love receiving a small, no-choice cheese course. It feels neat, and brings the meal to a more satisfying and precise conclusion.

Hermitage 1998, Bernard Faurie (Red Cap)

13.2% abv. I only recently discovered Faurie, and there is a whole lore to it. Different coloured caps represent different blends from the vineyards of Le Méal, Les Greffieux and Les Bessards, and it is not documented anywhere what is what. Evidently one cap colour can mean one thing when shipped to the United Kingdom versus the continent. A very experienced fellow diner informed me that this is a blend of all three vineyards. The cap was red, the wine was red, and it was lovely.

Garnet colour. Very serious yet drinking so well. Violets, lovely concentration, and it comes together with a taut yet lingering finish. A fellow diner remarked that these wines have a wildness that Chave never has. I do not have a great deal of experience of Chave, but this certainly has great and engaging energy. There is breadth and clarity here. Wine of the dinner for me, and possibly the best wine of the year so far.

Hermitage 2011, Bernard Faurie (White Cap)

13% abv. White cap, and I am informed this is from Greffieux and Bessards. There is something on the nose. I wrote “coals, cassis.” Somehow mossy. We discussed what mossy means in this context. Do I mean stemmy? Yes, I think there is a stemmy character, but also a sense of concentration and material that is not quite where you expect it. Like when you mow the lawn and there is moss where you were expecting grass. I suspect this was tasted at an awkward moment, or that we had an awkward bottle.

What did we learn? I love these dinners where I get to learn from such experienced and expert tasters. I do not always agree, but I always learn a great deal. It is a wonderful thing about our little wine-nerd community that we are so generous with our thoughts as well as our wines.

I am starting to get my head around Hermitage. As one fellow diner put it, there is something about that weighty, spherical fruit. In some ways it is the most claret-like of the Northern Rhône appellations. It ages well. Some of these wines were still humming at more than forty years of age.

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Nick Farr learned his trade from his father Gary Farr. He was good too, making wines at such august producers as Graillot in Crozes-Hermitage and the aforementioned Domaine Dujac. Gary taught Nick all he knew, and Nick went on to work at those producers and more. He is highly respected.

By Farr is a producer more widely known for their Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. It is many years since I last had a By Farr Chardonnay, of which they make several cuvées. I had better not pronounce on that range of their wines.

I highly recommend buying and ageing some By Farr Pinot Noir. The Sangreal cuvée in particular is better than Burgundy at multiple times its price and, if you can find some (it is rather difficult to source), you should stick it in the cellar until it is at least ten years old. You will be richly rewarded for your patience.

There is only one By Farr Shiraz. It is made with Farr’s own fruit grown in this cool climate area. It contains roughly 5% Viognier to add perfume and elegance, very much like a Côte-Rôtie. Are there other similarities to wines of that appellation? Let us find out!

To the corkscrew!

Shiraz 2019, By Farr

By Farr Shiraz has an elegant nose of raspberry fruit, with maybe a hint of blackberry. It is not overwhelmed by alcohol or new wood.

To be honest, By Farr Shiraz is not even particularly whelmed with the fruit, it is so pared back. It is certainly nice, and charming, just very discreet. But there are the other aromas.

No… no, there are not. There is that refined, light fruit, and that is about it. Do not get me wrong, that fruit is very nice, and I like small scale wines, there is just as little dimension as Keir Starmer’s personality.

So, the palate. There is nice raspberry fruit, a prickle of raspberry-skin tannin, it has an elegant, silky texture and… again we are talking to someone who makes John Major look like a party animal.

Pissflaps! I wanted to love this By Farr Shiraz so much but try as I might to look for character beyond drinkability, it just sucks all the colour and excitement out of the word ‘prosaic’. It is a nice drink, but Radio 2 in the afternoon is nice and I would find farting at the dinner table more thrillingly exciting than listening to Radio 2 in the afternoon.

I cannot believe that Nick Farr, whose Pinots have wowed me on many, many occasions, would set out to make a Syrah that is as gratifying as someone in a chastity belt. Wearing a straitjacket. With a gag over their mouth. Certainly, feet can look nice, but I would not want to risk athlete’s rude bits…

The Côteaux de Geelong must be distinctly boring Syrah terroir. I can only assume this is the bottom rung of the By Farr range and a cheap introduction to their wines.

Cheap? My arse! This 2019 By Farr Shiraz costs almost £52 a bottle in bond, which is to say about £66 delivered. By way of comparison, 2017 Domaine Lionnet Cornas Terre Brulee, a thrilling, massively enjoyable and seriously complex wine, costs £32 delivered. Similarly, 2022 Julien Barge Côte-Rôtie Les Côtes, one of the most elegant and sophisticated ‘generic’ Côte-Rôtie money can buy, costs £39.02 delivered.

Both of these wines thrash the arse of the By Farr Shiraz as far as rewarding, quality drinking experiences go, and yet they are vastly less expensive. Those two wines are red hot buying tips, by the way, and you should fill your boots sharpish!

“Ah, but this is an older vintage, it is going to be more expensive”, I hear you thinking. And indeed you are correct. The least expensive price I can find for the most recent release of By Farr Shiraz, the 2023, works out at roughly £59 a bottle delivered.

Not only are the two wines I mention above less expensive, but you will shortly be able to get the 2022 Champet Côte-Rôtie Les Fils a Jo for £50 a bottle. This a special selection of the oldest vines on from the brilliant Viaillère lieu-dit.

I managed to get some pre-release (for £46 a bottle, he he he!) and have tried one; it is beyond amazing (I review the fabulous 2020 here). That wine has everything one could ask from a Côte-Rôtie – clearly one of the most gratifying things I have put on my mouth all year – and it will be £9 a bottle less than the good-but-dull By Farr Shiraz.

There you have it! If you want someone else to buy a good but fundamentally jejune and quite banausic wine that is shockingly poor value, by all means point them toward By Farr Shiraz. For readers of this site, By Farr Shiraz is absolutely sub-interest.

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The lunch was friend of Elitistreview RZ’s idea. He has a fondness for Portuguese wine and feels they are underappreciated. He kindly shared some bottles from his cellar to help educate us.

The Medlar, on the Kings Road, is a restaurant of some sentimental significance to me. When I first started getting seriously into wine, in the mid to late 2000s, I attended many grand wine dinners there and learned a great deal.

Much like Nigel Platts-Martin’s restaurants, the premise is that this is a neighbourhood restaurant. The knowing wink is that the food is far better than it should be.

Over the years the quality has waxed and waned. Based on this experience, it is definitely back on form.

It is also worth noting that The Medlar is a sister restaurant to Cornus, which has appeared on these pages several times.

For starters I took the classic crab raviolo. Topped with samphire and shrimps and bathed in a fish velouté, this type of dish is now commonplace in London restaurants. I do not know whether Medlar started the trend, but I first tried it here. It was just as good as I remember. Rich but delicate, it went very well with the whites.

My main was guinea fowl. My immediate thought was: why do we not eat guinea fowl more often? It is as tasty as good French chicken, with no dryness. Served on cabbage with crispy potatoes, it was delicious, hearty and wine friendly.

For afters we shared two cheese portions between four. Very good. We finished with madeleines and blood orange sorbet. Who does not love blood orange sorbet?

WHITES

Colares Genuíno Branco 2021, Viúva José Gomes da Silva & Filhos

12.5% abv. 100% Malvasia de Colares. Colares is pretty much due west of Lisbon. It must surely be the westernmost wine-growing region of Europe, jutting out into the Atlantic.

The wines of Colares are grown on ungrafted vines in what they call the “sandy soils” of Colares. They look more like sand dunes with vines growing in them. Barely soil at all.

Served from a 50cl bottle. Evidently there is not a great deal of this to go around, so they sell it in small bottles.

A somewhat ecclesiastical nose. Stepping into a rural high church on a cold spring morning, with just a hint of tangerine following the incense.

A lovely acid core. Intense without being shrill. A waxy, Chenin-like mouthfeel. Both wines improved with food, but out of this and the next wine, this Colares started ahead and maintained its lead.

Buçaco Branco Reservado 2021, Alexandra d’Almeida

13% abv. Made from Encruzado (Dão), Maria Gomes and Bical (Bairrada) grapes. Served in a generous 75cl bottle. The label is very fancy and well designed. The vintage, however, is printed off-centre on a small white sticker. There is something gloriously incongruent about this.

Evidently, back in the day, this wine was only available at the hotels owned by the founder, Senhor d’Almeida. It is somewhat similar to the Colares. A little more oxidative in style, with a little bitterness on the finish.

It is classy, but the élevage is clearly present. More than decent. Then you look at what it sells for, and my goodness, it had better be.

These wines started a discussion around Assyrtiko. There is a similar mid-palate intensity and purity, but these have gentler alcohol and a slightly less aggressive mouthfeel.

REDS

Arenæ Colares Ramisco 2007, Adega Regional de Colares

12.5% abv. 100% Ramisco. Made by the regional cooperative, again served from a 50cl bottle, and again from ungrafted vines growing on sandy soil. Pale colour.

Lovely fruit character on the front and middle palate, with a clean acid at the end. Pinot Noir in weight, with just a hint of rusticity and some substance in the middle to hold everything in place. The finish carries just a hint of sweetness to balance the acidity.

Evidently this is aged in Brazilian oak. Who even knew that was a thing? This sparked a discussion about what constitutes a Southern European wine.

This is poised and precise. Not clumsy. It puts me in mind of a good bottle of Le Soula Rouge in a low alcohol, non-funky year. Once again, the Colares wins my heart as wine of the flight.

Buçaco Reservado 2017, Alexandra d’Almeida

13.5% abv. Made from Touriga Nacional and Baga grapes. Back to full bottle size. The oak is French, not Brazilian.

There was some discussion as to whether it was fair to describe this wine as international in style. I felt it was, but wiser people with better palates than me disagreed.

This is clearly still a young wine. The fine tannins march in close single file. In ten or even twenty years this will tell a very interesting story. There is a hint of dark and stone fruits on the finish, just starting to peer out.

I do not want to damn with faint praise, and I would certainly hope to taste a more mature example at some point. At these prices, however, you could buy three bottles of Lionnet Terre Brûlées Cornas from the same vintage. That would be a treat and a half.

MADEIRA

Madeira Malvasia “Single Harvest” Colheita 1999, Barbeito

At this stage of proceedings, analysis gives way to feelings. My handwritten notes say: “light, youth, subtle, good with cheese.” It is medium dry with some bite at the finish. This is really good. I can see why people obsess over Madeira.

Madeira Tinta Negra Colheita 1999, Justino’s

Ordered by the glass off the list. This is a much darker beast. There is sweetness and depth, but much less sophistication. It worked very well with the madeleines and was a match for the blood orange sorbet.

CONCLUSIONS

Wine is really about the sharing. This lunch was just the tonic. Good friends, good food, good wine and the opportunity to learn and to connect.

The Colares and Buçaco wines were lovely. At around £60–80 per bottle, they are fully priced. Much like a lot of English sparkling wine, they represent good value only if they spark something in your soul. Something beyond the character of the liquid in the glass itself. That is not a criticism. It is merely a reminder that some wines ask more of you than others.

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