At the beginning of the year I had the pleasure of conducting a tasting of great 1990s kindly donated by banker Paul Gilbert in aid of the Senahasa Trust, his pet charity in Sri Lanka. He works for the beleaguered Royal Bank of Scotland and a little unexpectedly it turned out that the winning bidder of this auction lot works for rival bank HSBC, who used the tasting to entertain clients. The winning bid was made in what seems now like another financial era (September 2008). As things turned out, the first date that everyone could manage was in...