Is this Greece’s finest wine since Homer strummed his lyre?

We were in deepest Dorset, l’Angleterre profonde. The weather was also typically English: inundations followed by counter-attacks from the Indian summer. Despite those, and even under a still blue sky, it was just too nippy to eat outside — or at least, that was what the less well-insulated members of the party insisted. Fear no more the heat of the sun. It has gone south with the swallows. But there was mellow fruitfulness, in this season which offers a delicious choice between grouse and partridge (unless you are Nicholas Soames, and have both).

When it came to accompanying bottles, we were eclectic. Our hosts are good friends of Giugi, Marchese di Sesti, who makes superb wines in Montalcino, amid the splendours of Toscana profonda. It is a prelapsarian region, in which nature, agriculture, man, art and architecture are in joyous harmony. You almost expect to hear the music of the spheres.

Giugi is passionately interested in astrology. In Montalcino, that does not seem absurd. Not only are the heavens benign. There is a sense that the ancient cults, especially the Bacchic ones, are not extinct but have merely withdrawn from public view. bc and ad can also unite in a joint communion: a consecration of the pleasures of the table. One suspects that many local devotions are stimulated by the marriage at Cana and its accompanying Miracle. On that theme, two paintings in the Louvre, by Gerard David and Veronese, exemplify artistic transition. The David has an intimate Flemish intensity. There is nothing intimate about the Veronese. ‘Orgueilleuse’ comes to mind as a more appropriate description than English can supply.

Whatever influence the stars bring to bear, Giugi’s Brunellos are stellar: just about as good as any expression of Sangiovese. He also makes two second wines, a Rosso di Montalcino and a Monteleccio: both excellent value.