Two glasses and 32 years

The wines change, and we change with them. It is 1980, in Washington, and a girl gives me a bottle of 1974 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon reserve as a birthday present. It would have been churlish not to drink it together, though I feared it would be too young. It was; much too young: too young, even, for Jimmy Savile. It was like eating green strawberries. Not that I admitted this to my companion. Knowing nothing about wine, she thought six years was old. If it lacked immediate appeal, she blamed her own lack of sophistication. Anyway, it was a pleasant evening.

Last week, an oenophile gathering, and a merchant produces a bottle of the same wine which he had picked up in a cheap mixed-case purchase. 1974 had been an excellent year in California. There was no reason why that wine should not have reached a gracious maturity. Even if a little over the hill, it had been a high hill; there was every hope of pleasure for a long way down.