Drink: Life after Lafite

I had an old friend — now, sadly, dead — who spent his final years in terror of his wife.

I had an old friend — now, sadly, dead — who spent his final years in terror of his wife. By the time he reached man’s estate, he had developed a taste for good claret. As he became a good lawyer, he was able to indulge it. Jolly expeditions to Bordeaux, long sessions with old-fashioned wine-merchants, his own estimable palate: the outcome was an enviable cellar.

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And an increasingly valuable one. My late friend refused to let counting-house considerations deter him from drinking his treasures; that attitude of mind was for billing clients, not opening bottles. Even so, he was astonished by the constant upward pressure on wine prices. He could no longer afford to buy his favourites en primeur, but as he said, that hardly mattered, for two reasons.