I hope you will not be surprised if I say that until today I have never ever received a cheque from a wine merchant. But the stack of mail awaiting me when I returned from Germany late last night included a cheque for nearly £400 made out to me by enterprising Edinburgh wine merchamt Raeburn Fine Wines.
The ony accompanying documentation was a copy of the invoice I had paid at the end of March for a case of Dry River Pinot Noir 2002 Martinborough, one of New Zealand's rarest and most admired wines, a credit note for the same...