Dominic Sandbrook

And here drank a sort of French wine called Ho' Brian that hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with.

Now, this is so interesting, isn't it?

Because what's he call it?

Ho Brian.

Yeah, his approach to pronouncing foreign languages is very much mine.

So it's actually...

which was the first... This is so interesting.

The first Bordeaux wine, so the first Claret, to be sold in London, not labelled as Bordeaux or as Claret, and not labelled... Because they always used to have the label... Well, often on the label, they would have the name of the wine merchant, wouldn't they?

Yeah.

But this bottle that Peeps has been drinking has the name of the estate that made the wine.

Isn't that interesting?

So the French make the best wines, but the people who decide which those wines are, are English consumers.

Yes.

And I think that's still true today.

i mean when you say english consumers it's obviously aristocratic consumers well do you know what it's funny we're talking about the english palate but as late as the 1950s most english people never ever drank wine in any given year it's such an elite exclusive thing yeah so it's it's it's it's very much the kind of the upper class is

Well, of course, it becomes very useful later in the 20th century when they're facing competition from the New World.

And they can say, well, look, you may have this, you may have that, but you don't have our tradition and our terroir.

Right.

Well, people genuinely believed that, didn't they, for a long time until the 1970s, the most interesting decade in history.

And we come to our final moment, which is the judgment of Paris.