“Of course, right. Well, there’s plenty of that.”

The lamb arrived, moist and tender. The wine was poured, admired, and sipped. Charlie, his nose still hovering over his glass, looked up at Max. “How would you rate it?”

Max took another sip, rolling the wine around his mouth as Charlie had done. “Bloody good. Bloody good.”

Charlie raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Won’t do, old son. You can’t describe a work of art like that. You’ve got to brush up on the jargon, the connoisseur’s vocabulary.” He held up one hand, anticipating Charlie’s reaction. “I know, I know. You’re always saying we talk a lot of crap in the property business. But believe me, we’re just beginners compared to the wine boys.” He struck a pose, holding his glass by its base and swirling it gently. “Do I detect faded tulips? Beethoven in a mellow mood? The complexity, the almost Gothic structure…” He grinned at the expression on Max’s face. “I’ve never heard such a lot of twaddle in my life, but that’s the way some of them bang on.”

He then told Max about the first meeting of the Young Connoisseurs’ Club, which he had been invited to join by Billy, his friend in the wine trade. Half a dozen young men-enthusiastic drinkers, but by no means connoisseurs-had gathered in a set of dignified chambers in St. James’s, the headquarters of an old established firm of shippers. Here, amidst the spittoons and flickering candles, beneath portraits of the bewhiskered gentlemen who had founded the firm, they were to sample wines from a few of the lesser-known chateaux in Bordeaux, and one or two promising upstarts from Australia and California.

Their host, Billy, was young, as wine merchants go. He had been taken into the firm when his more elderly colleagues had realized that their equally elderly customers were buying less wine, often as a result of natural causes (or, as some would say, death).