Back home in London under an avalanche of samples sent for review, it is strange for me to reflect on a visit to one famous Friuli producer last week who seemed rather reluctant to let me taste any wine at all. I know the odd purple pager encounters this phenomenon when visiting wine producers (see Martin Nettleton’s recent account of his surprisingly arid visit chez Billaud Simon in Chablis, for example). It seems extraordinary to me that any wine producer would be mean to any visitor with samples of what they have to sell, but perhaps especially so with a...