Winter nights rambling on

Back home, as night falls, from dog walking past the church, round the great turnip field, through the eerie woods where the two French stunt pilots fell to earth last year.

Pale full moon and just enough light to put the birds to bed. The old geese still in foul mood. They know we just murdered their kids. And will again next year. Hens already asleep. Understandable; their light comes on at 3.30am and eggs must be laid, even in winter. The daft ducks still have to be coaxed off the pond and still don't know where their safe place is after all these years.

Dogs fed and unconscious by the stove. Wife asleep over sudoku. Me figuring what to do with the rack of venison and that basket of fresh, damp and dirty garden veg. Despite hours watching the cooking shows, just bung everything in a roasting pan.

Gives me more time to go rummaging in my cellar-chaos.

There's those who have Cellar Books and who range everything in neat order. And then there's us who just lob new bottles in wherever there's space. True, we can rarely find what we are looking for but this is compensated for by finding something else completely different and exciting which we had no idea we still had. So it’s like a gift. From the gods.

Tonight some deep mining finds us a bottle of our very own Château La Clarière Laith. From 1990. Made with my own hands.

Dusted off. Decanted away from its considerable sediment. It was a delight. Old wine is so gentle. Kind to you. Quiet. But just sit with it and listen. It has a lot to say.

In truth, I had always been a little disappointed with this vintage. It produced some marvellous wines around us on the 'Right Bank'. I will never forget the Château Angelus which was so immediately scrummy - hugely fat black and fruity - that I drank the case within 12 months. Greedy boy. But my own wine came out much lighter and not so ripe at all. It was hard to love. And people told me so. But now … time has worked its wonders. It’s a lovely wine today.

Clearly I should say a lovely little wine. It is a much lighter wine than we make today. Understandable because back then we produced the same amount of wine as now … but from half the acreage. Our vines were under ten years old and very vigorous. And we hadn't yet started thinning the crop to concentrate our wine.

But back then all wines from Castillon and 90% of Saint-Emilion were similarly 'little'. And everybody loved them because that's the way they were and always had been.

There is no doubt that the great influx of Big Strong New World wines in the '90s and the way that – to stay in contention – European wines all had to go on bodybuilding courses, changed wine drinking forever. Or perhaps not forever. Perhaps just for a while.