Dominic Sandbrook

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No one can really doubt that some kinds of wine are simply better than others.

Nor does it come as news to anyone that when wines are made from the same vat, one cask will often turn out to be superior to the other, either because of the material that the cask has been made from, or due to some other circumstance.

Nevertheless, even though there is a general consensus as to the best wines, one that's been arrived at after many years, there can be no accounting for personal taste.

A famous story is told which illustrates this.

One of the freedmen in the household of the deified Augustus, a man celebrated for his connoisseurship and his palate, accompanied Augustus on a visit to a house.

brought a local wine by the master of the house, he tasted it, and then delivered this verdict.

"'This is not a wine that I have ever tasted before.

I do not rate it.

It is effectively vinegar.

Caesar, however, will love it, and doubtless will insist on drinking it all the time.'

So that was the very first wine snob in history.

No lesser figure than Pliny the Elder.

And that story features in his enormous encyclopedia, which he wrote in the first century AD.

And it's part of a long section of the encyclopedia, which is all about wine.

And anyone who knows the work of Alan Partridge will know that Alan Partridge has a huge world book of wine.

And it sounds remarkably similar to Pliny's thing about wine, because like Alan Partridge's World Book of Wine, Pliny the Elder catalogues it by region with great thoroughness and attention to detail.