Dominic Sandbrook

I mean, by the way, wine experts, some of these people are the arbiters of French wine.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's the head of the Oenological Institute of France.

There is the head of the Wine Academy.

There is the inspector general of the Appellation d'origine contrôlée board, which is basically the board that decides whether your wine, you know, gets appellation status, gets the sort of badge of quality.

So these are not just like the wine critic of Le Figaro or something.

These are like proper people.

Yeah, Stag's Leap.

And it had been planted brilliantly by a man called Warren Winiarski.

Couldn't be more American.

It's new and it's planted by a bloke called Warren.

Well, one of those wines in the judgment of Paris was from a winery, I think founded in something like 1971 or 1972 called Clos Duval.

So given a kind of artificial contrived French name to denote quality.

Oh, isn't that kind?

That's a nice note on which to end.

I think it's about competition, frankly, but there you go.

Lovely.

Such an interesting story.

And if you're interested in hearing more about the history of wine, we will be talking about wine in the New World and its relationship to deeper historical changes, not least the rise and fall of the British Empire.

in Wednesday's bonus episode for Rest Is History Club members with the great wine writer and friend of the show, Henry Jeffries.