London wine merchants Lea and Sandeman held their spring tasting at the end of March this year, and at that point, spring couldn’t have felt further away. Winter had become that guest who was stubbornly outstaying her welcome, despite polite and increasingly not-so-polite hints. Daffodils were still hunkering down in green stalks, and where I live the farmers were getting quite desperate as they were running out of hay and silage to feed cattle, while fields sat under several inches of water and the grass refused to grow.
But this tasting, which struck me as one defined by uplifting freshness...