''Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay," says Bottom. I, too, have a great desire to a bottle of hay - more than a bottle: 2,000 bales, to be precise. But I write in anxious mood, remembering a rain-soaked crop that the horses regarded as preferable to newspaper only in containing no attacks on their way of life.
Meanwhile, as I watch the clouds that glow in the sunset, I crave for a bottle of something more appropriate to my anxious mood than hay: white Burgundy, for instance, which mingles midsummer life with a serene foretaste of autumn. And I am in luck: Corney & Barrow has delivered three bottles of the stuff, enough to see us through the evening.
The cliff of Solutre is famous for the people and animals who have been pushed or chased from it on to the rocks below. Those rocks lie in the communes of Pouilly and Fuisse; and Macon-Solutre, read correctly, means next door to Pouilly-Fuisse. This particular example, hand-crafted by the Auvigue family, comes from the village of Charnay, and has the creamy aroma and full, rounded finish of Macon at its best. A glass or two reduced those thunderclouds to a size that could only be laughed at.
We were still laughing as we journeyed from Solutre in the deep south of the Cote Chalonnaise to Marsannay at the very top of the Cote de Nuits, from which village the Trapet family takes the grapes for its quite exceptional white Burgundy. This opulent, nutty and multi-layered wine will mature over several years, and is let down only by its appalling postmodern label, on which the Trapets, in complete disregard of their national traditions, try to present themselves as a brand. We forgave them, however, as we looked into the twilight and saw that the clouds had vanished.
Olivier Leflaive and his winemaker Franck Grux have set a standard for the great white Burgundies that very few can match. £20 may seem a lot for a bottle, but this one from Les Meix (next door to the first-growth vineyard of Les Pucelles) has the soft almond perfume and clear, balanced flavour of its illustrious neighbour. It is worth buying the mixed case, which gives you nine excellent bottles for guests and three bottles of Puligny-Montrachet for your own personal use, at £12 a bottle. Needless to say, by the end of this, we were not in a mood to admit that it was raining: those drops on our cheeks, surely, were tears of merriment.
We staggered happily indoors, to change out of our sopping clothes and warm ourselves with sausages. The Trapets' smooth and flowery Bourgogne Passetoutgrains (that is to say, Pinot Noir and Gamay blended) dried us out beautifully. Pity about the hay, but you can't have a bottle of everything.
