He paused again, then clicked his fingers.

‘All except Bassano del Grappa! I remember someone making a joke about having to wait until I was older before trying grappa. I didn’t understand at the time. I was just annoyed at having that gap in my collection. It ached like a pulled tooth.’

‘Excellent! Perfect! Then no doubt you will understand how I felt when I heard about this dreadful business involving Aldo Vincenzo.’

Zen frowned, returning reluctantly to the present.

‘Vincenzo?’ he echoed.

The famous director shone his torch around the neighbouring bins, lifted a bottle and held it out to Zen. The faded label read:

BARBARESCO 1964. VINIFICATO ED IMBOTTIGLIATO DAL PRODUTTORE A. VINCENZO.

‘Aldo Vincenzo was one of the producers I selected more than thirty years ago as worthy of a place in the cellar I then decided to create,’ he declared solemnly, replacing the bottle on the stack with as much care as a baby in its cot. ‘And now he’s dead and his son is in prison, all on the eve of what promises to be one of the great vintages of the century! That’s the reason why you have been “summoned here”, as you put it.’

‘You want to complete your collection.’

‘Exactly!’

‘To continue your horizontal tastings.’

His host regarded Zen sharply, as if suspecting some irony.

‘They might be that,’ he remarked, ‘if one actually swallowed all the wines on offer. Such, of course, is not the way in which a vertical tasting is conducted. But in any case, if you imagine that I have any chance of personally enjoying this year’s vintage at its best, you credit me with the longevity of a Methuselah. The patriarch, not the bottle.’