An Ancient Vintage

If you've been perusing the more recent postings, you'll already know that The High Lord of Southwick has been visiting.

On this occasion, he brought as a gift a bottle of wine made with the fruits of his own vast plantations and woodlands in Wiltshire. "Hmmm - that's nothing special," you might be thinking. But you'd be thinking wrong.

Look at the date on that carefully crafted label. Yes, you read it right. Nineteen Eighty Four. That makes the liquid within over twenty five years old; a taste of a summer that ended a quarter of a century ago.

We opened it, we poured it, we sniffed it. Cop an eyeful of that beautiful amber-red colour.

Then we slurped it; here's Dozybean drinking something a few years older than she is:

And here are, in order of appearance, Mrs The Millbrooker and the skilled wine making owner of Chateau Chantrée, The High Lord himself, as they enjoyed the vintage.

In case you're curious, the years had given the wine a deeply flavoured dryness. The nearest we got to describing it was being like a Tio Pepe sherry. Put simply, it was scrummy. Mmm, mmm, mmm.