The buzzards circle over the newly mown fields where mice, deprived of their cover, are making for the hedgerows. The thrush cries, "What are you doing? What are you doing?", and a sedge warbler trills its way through evensong beside the pond. This is our corner of old England, and for these brief summer days we can strive to forget that England has been officially wiped from the map, that our Scottish rulers have decided to abolish the Lord Chancellor, the monarchy, the House of Commons or whatever other fuddy-duddy old institution stands in the way of Progress, and have decreed that the rural English should be rounded up like the kulaks and put to work laying runways.
The best accompaniment to our thoughts of old England are the wines of old Bordeaux - once an English possession, still counted among the titles of our crown, and peculiarly suited to the English temperament in its phlegmatic fruitiness and in its meditative distance from the future. A wine merchant's serendipity is severely tested by the petits chateaux of Bordeaux. For there are so many of them, so finely tuned and so finely graded, so immersed in their diverse histories and terroirs, and so ridiculously underpriced when compared with the classed growths of the region.
This month's offer from Corney & Barrow is proof of the great virtues of that firm, which has discovered four wines of astonishing quality, offered at prices that even the marginalised kulaks of old England can afford. Admittedly, it didn't require much serendipity to stumble across Chateau de Sours, the now famous property of the Majestic Wine Warehouse owner, Esme Johnstone, whose rose has in 2002 lived up to its well-deserved reputation. Hardly out of its first fermentation, with beaded bubbles winking at the rim, it helped us to celebrate the first field of hay, and consoled us when rain fell on the second.
The white wine of Chateau de Sours is every bit as good as the rose, with the opulent fruit, clean palate and waxy surface of a Graves. This is a sophisticated wine, one that the BBC might show being drunk by elegant Cambridge spies as they discuss how to help those darling Bolsheviks carry out their amusing mass murders.
Chateau Les Ricards has long been a Scruton favourite. From the underrated Cotes de Blaye, its deep plum colour (due to 20 per cent Malbec) and its superb aroma put it well into the class of the crus bourgeois of the Medoc. Buy this while you can: at five years old, it is just beginning to show its qualities. Very different, but just as expertly made, is the Cabernet-Merlot mix from Chateau Carignan - a deep, supple, licorice-tinted wine and one of C&B's triumphs. Pity about the pretentious bottle.
