Savouring the mystique

I have never met Roger Scruton, though I would like to; wine fans are slightly obsessional and enjoy clustering together, like trainspotters, though tasting rooms are more welcoming than the end of a platform at Crewe. We’re also very different. Shortly after I, working for the left-of-centre Guardian, became the wine writer for this conservative magazine, Scruton, a right-wing philosopher, took the same job at the New Statesman.

Given the rivalry between these two organs, I took a keen interest in what he wrote. For instance, round about the same time that he pointed out that ‘it is almost impossible to find a decent Burgundy these days for less than £30’ we were selling El Vino’s own-brand Velvin for £3.95. As it happened, Velvin was Burgundy, over- production from a good year which could not be sold under its real name. I suspected then that Scruton’s appointment was a joke, a riposte by the Staggers’ editor to readers who believed that John Pilger was God.