Drink, drink, drink (pace, Father Jack!)

My impecunious state over the last few years would - probably should - have condemned me to the state of only drinking house wine for the remainder of my days. Luckily I have good friends who appreciate my company enough to dig out fine bottles from their cellars to share with me, allowing me access to some very fine stuff indeed, what I live for, really.

At the end of a long September day, having welcomed my lovely Finnish friends to Athens and made sure that they were safely ensconced in their little holiday flat, I hot-footed it to my friend AM's place for a bite to eat but, more importantly, for a drop or two of wine. Many years ago when we were both London based I was a contributor to his cellar and, indeed, helped forge his wine preferences so that he is now able, without specific advice, to surf the world's markets and purchase stuff that is good both for keeping and for current drinking.

Of course a little bit of common sense is all that is needed to buy sensibly, once you have a decent budget and understand the basics of the way the wine market functions - my friend has all those quantities in abundance and has learnt from his mistakes. Also, he has a pocket that can weather the odd false move, a useful asset when investing in the aged wine market.

The first wine we had a crack at was a Taittinger champagne. Now this is a well-respected house with a decent non-vintage cuvee and good vintage champagne, but their real glory is their luxury Comtes de Champagne cuvee, of which we were privileged to share the 2006 vintage. This is a staggeringly good wine lacking the vulgar publicity of, say, a Dom Perignon, and all the better for it. Blanc des blancs, a chardonnay wine from grand cru rated vineyards and with class to spare, the 2006 was incredibly young and vigorous, almost gauche, clean and creamy, young and lemony, to untrained eyes a current vintage. Delicate layers of taste take turns to assail your palate with pleasure that only the finest champagne can provide, here still awkward with youth despite the thirteen years of age, subtle, complex and beguiling, with more ahead of it.

And then the big surprise, a 1975 claret, from a year that initially promised so much and spectacularly failed to delivered, with hard tannins outliving the lively fruit of youth and, in many cases, leaving graceless, dried out wines. Well, not the bottle of Leoville Las Cases that we were privileged to attack this evening which, while perhaps short of perfection in balance and refinement, was now drinking especially well. A surprisingly deep and vigorous colour with only a tiny bit of brick on the outside led to a discreet vanilla and red fruit nose and a cornucopia of red fruit on the palate, complex and clean, without a hint of the hardness that has bedevilled this vintage in the past. I was surprised, nay bowled over, by this stunning, elegant, Leoville, still youthful, still complex, which leads me back to a reevaluation of the vintage - anybody with more 1975s to taste?

Sure, we had some food with the wine, including peached salmon, salad, wild rice and a spectacularly good spinach pie that managed to be light and flavoursome - delicious in fact - at the same time, but they were there to support the wine. You are, dear reader, lucky to have found me and so learn through my experiences how wonderful the world of wine can be. Trust me, it is amazing!