‘The definitive Christmas present for wine lovers’ recreated

George Saintsbury (1920)

In fact, despite the wonderful first taste of the great Auslese wines, I think both hock and Moselle best as beverage drinks; for in these lower qualities, the overpowering and almost barbaric volume of flavour does not occur…

For the red hocks, however, I must put in a word, both in justice to them and in charity to my fellow-creatures. They – not merely Assmanshäuser, which certainly is the best, but Walporzheimer, Ober-lngelheimer and others – are specifics for insomnia after a fashion which seems to be very little known…

…white sparkling Bordeaux is an anti-natural perversity, the invention of which deserved Dante’s circle of the fiery rain.

Peter Vinding-Diers (2019)

The vineyards of Beaune popped up almost suddenly, the vines standing to attention like small trees. Back then, at the beginning of the 1960s, they were still bush trained and made a wonderful sight. I remember being completely taken-in by the charm of them, and my old dream of becoming a forester suddenly became the stepping-stone to something new. Why not become a vigneron instead? … 

Almost opposite was a small grocer’s shop and here I found some unlabelled burgundy that came from the vineyard of one of the grocer’s friends. The wine was full of violets, creamy and velvety, and, even better, the bottles were very cheap indeed. I must have drunk most of this stock of heavenly burgundy that summer…

As we were drinking the bubbles Dennis took me aside: ‘I see that you like champagne,’ he said. ‘So do I. Why don’t we buy the entire stock on board?’ What a devilish idea! And why not indeed. So we did just that….

There is nothing like being young and in love, and even if we didn’t have salt to an egg, it didn’t seem to matter… we talked about my idea of growing vines and making wine. Nobody thought it strange and I got all the encouragement I needed from both my friends and family. But the benediction I really needed came from Susie, and throughout it all she stood by me.