My thrilling rendezvous with the sausage lady

One day last week we did a wine run up to Manosque in the foothills of the Alps, leaving early in the morning. Catriona drove, big Vernon squeezed into the back seat and made a nest for himself among a fortnight’s recycling rubbish. Along the road up to Manosque the almond trees were in blossom, and in the gardens yellow forsythia and mimosa. But last year’s dead leaves still clung about the naked branches of the forest. Manosque it was because we’re massive fans of a local red called La Blaque.

But on the way we passed a Louis Latour wine outlet. Catriona likes their Viré-Clessé white so we stopped for a tasting. The first customers through the door at nine o’clock, we stood around a barrel table whirling chilled white wine around big thin glasses and emerged half an hour later into a brighter, funnier morning.

Vernon is a French-American whose American accent is indistinguishable from Jack Nicholson’s.