Coche v Lafon tasting

Every summer we rusticate in the Languedoc, there to enjoy a relatively uninterrupted diet of the region’s often-excellent wines. But it has become a tradition that one night every summer our neighbour Graham Nutter of the Minervois wine estate Château St Jacques d’Albas raids his well-stocked cellar to organise a semi-serious tasting of more famous wines.

One year it was a vertical tasting of Trimbach’s Clos Ste Hune, probably my favourite dry Riesling of all. Another time we tried various vintages of Cos d’Estournel. Last year we examined some particularly venerable...