The best bottle to come from the Gigondas

One needs wine more than ever, yet when imbibing, it can be hard to concentrate. So much is going on. We were at table and the news came through about Slovakia. Was this an obscure incident, regrettable but below the level of geopolitics? Or would it become a second Sarajevo? Fortunately, that seems unlikely. In Mitteleuropa, there are always ancestral voices prophesying war and there is usually plenty of dry timber. But it does not seem that this assassination attempt will be the spark.

The Barruols have a reputation for delightful eccentricity but they are committed to their bottles

When we had come to that conclusion, there was an obvious next step. Gavrilo Princip nearly missed his chance to murder the Archduke. If he had failed to do so, would there still have been a war? We decided that the answer was yes. The central powers were squaring up and the public mood resembled that of a war horse pawing the ground and waiting for the sound of trumpets. Winston Churchill did warn that the wars of peoples would be more terrible than the wars of kings but even he did not realise what everyone was letting themselves in for. The bands struck up, the flags flew, the joyous troops set off – to chew barbed wire in Flanders, during the second fall of man.

One hundred and ten years later, the damnosa hereditas of 1914 is still with us. The fall of empires always leads to carnage. In 1914, the precarious state of Europe led to war and chaos. The precariousness persists and shows no sign of being resolved.