Dominic Sandbrook

There are all these forests that produce cork.

And Portugal still to this day is the world's great producer of corks.

Yeah.

And again, the cork is a little bit like the dark wine bottle, isn't it?

There are lots of people, particularly in the New World and Australia and in California, who say, why are we still using cork?

You know, a screw top is just as good.

But cork is seen as a marker of prestige and quality.

And, you know, if you buy a very expensive bottle of wine, you don't expect it to have a screw cap.

You expect it to have a Portuguese cork.

To be fair, anyone who drinks wine has had a moment like that with a cork where basically something's gone hideously wrong and you can't get it out and you're just shaming yourself in front of your guests.

But...

Well, since the Romans.

Yeah, we talked about the Gallic enthusiasm for wine.

They've been producing it through the Roman period.

Bordeaux, when the English controlled Bordeaux in the Middle Ages.

Yeah.

Dad is producing claret for English tables.

The conviviality.

There's a dark side to peeps that I don't endorse.

Anyway, off the exchange with Sir Jay Cutler and Mr Grant to the Royal Oak Tavern in Lombard Street, where Broom the poet was, a merry and witty man, I believe, if he be not a little conceited.