Enter, Wine Expert, None.

“Any wine worth its decanter has to be French. Anything else is not suited to my palate.”

I paused at the door of my friend’s villa, forefinger a millimetre from a doorbell shaped like a cork. His voice drifted through the French windows, fruity, mellow and full of body. Rather like a Burgundy of dubious origin. It carried the solemnity of a man unveiling a national budget.

Villas attract worldly-wise folk the way honey attracts bees, and some villas have resident bees. My friend is one. He is a generous host with an expansive taste in beverages, and I have been poured everything from agave to whisky, with and without the ‘e’. He knows what he likes, and likes what he knows. Which is not always encyclopaedic.

“When I was in the Loire last summer, I insisted on stocking up on some wonderful Beaujolais. I have very specific tastes, as you all know.”

I grinned, pressed the bell and walked straight into a Sancerre, thrust at me with the enthusiasm of a man who had discovered it himself minutes earlier. My friend lives alone but is never alone. Tonight everyone shared one goal: to deplete his stock of Beaujolais-from-the-Loire.

“My friend here loves a good Rayesling,” he announced, “and a Toakij.” I raised an eyebrow at this innocent mangling of two beloved wines. Nobody else did. Around the room, guests performed the small choreography wine demands: the glance at the label, the faintly knowing nod, the careful first sip. Wine has a way of rearranging a room without asking permission. It doesn’t shout. It simply arrives and waits for everyone to behave accordingly. Most manage it badly.

A woman with a flute of champagne held out her hand. She resembled the glass: elegant, upright and bubbly. She glanced at my Sancerre. “Ah, Henri Bourgeois 2022. Lovely year. Unlike the Rayesling of that same vintage.” Her eyes flicked towards my friend, who was now explaining his Loire Beaujolais, a geographical innovation entirely his own.

Noticing my expression, she added, “I’m a Master of Wine.” She said it as though confessing to a mild fondness for crosswords.

I told her about my attempts at learning, which were less a journey than a series of budget-constrained detours. Becoming an MW sat on my bucket list, about as attainable as a Jadot Grand Cru at less than fifty dollars. She nodded over her flute. “Classrooms matter, if you are sérieux. But you must visit the source. Taste the grape before the wine. The palate needs to learn.”

My friend loomed up with a bottle in each hand: the Sancerre, which went into my glass like so much water, and a Vintage Veuve Clicquot, poured delicately into her flute. I had been with him when he bought it from a friend in the airlines. I nearly fainted at the price. He paid it serenely, like a man buying an opinion. He knew what he liked. Though he may not have understood it.

I offered my recent forays into Chilean and Indian wines. He dismissed them with a wave that suggested national loyalty rather than tasting experience. The MW, though, nodded. “New markets are interesting. They add competition. And some of the wines are very good.” My friend wandered off, his receding back expressing disapproval of anything made beyond a comfortable drive from Paris.

Around us, the room took its cue. A man swirled his Beaujolais with the concentration of someone checking a bank statement. A woman sniffed hers and declared it “very French”, which, to be fair, it was. A third guest photographed the label and said nothing, like a man filing evidence. Someone asked, quite loudly, whether Bojolly was a grape. Nobody corrected him, since that would have required actually knowing. My friend surveyed them all like a conductor whose orchestra had finally learned the piece. Nobody had been told what to think of Chilean wine, so nobody did. It was far safer to stay in France.

The Master of Wine, meanwhile, was the only person in the room not narrating her glass. She tasted, said little, and corrected nothing she had not been asked about. In that room, this made her practically a dissident. Her one dig at the Rayesling had been delivered to me, privately, over a flute. I found that more intimidating than any lecture.

I asked her what she thought of non-alcoholic wines. She shrugged non-committally. “What’s the point, really?”

I asked her if she was free the following weekend.

Wine should be enjoyed. Drink responsibly.

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