The claret of the gods

I cannot remember a jollier lunch. There are two brothers, Sebastian and Nicholas Payne, both practical epicureans. They have made a profession out of their pleasures. For many years, Sebastian was the chief buyer for the Wine Society. As he has a superb palate and is relentless in the search for good value, he is entitled to undying gratitude from tens of thousands of British wine drinkers. Nicholas has spent his career running opera companies. Sebastian knows a lot about opera, Nicholas about wine: the brothers share a cellar.

We had assembled to taste some 2001 clarets, which required concentration, and rewarded it. But there was also time for opera talk. Nicholas’s vocation must require diplomatic skills. He remained impassive while I denounced Graham Vick, who regularly performed a feat one would have thought impossible: making Mozart ugly. It might have been thought that directing Mozart was easy. You merely have to achieve a harmony between the farcical and the sublime, which is already there in the libretto and the score.