Auberon Waugh’s way with wine

The cellars at Combe Florey, the house in Somerset in which I grew up, were a place of mystery and fear. You walked down wide, shallow stone steps to a large door on which my father had stuck a postcard which read ‘I know who you are’ when, in a fit of paranoia, he decided that a neighbour was stealing his wine. Once through the door, there were more steps down until you found yourself in a large, cool, faintly musty-smelling room. Bats, furious at the disturbance, swooped around you until they sulkily returned to their lair in some dark corner. Off each wall were more cellars: in one, a large red boiler rumbled and groaned, a ridiculously grand chandelier hung, totally out of place, and a portrait of Queen Charlotte leered out at you. The others, with curved ceilings and small iron-barred windows which looked out at ground level, held the stacks of wine, all carefully sorted by grape, year, etc.