After several bottles, our finances had magically righted themselves

The ancient Egyptians labelled their wine not with its place of origin but with its use: wine for dancing, wine for official visits, and so on. There was also wine for tax collection, and it was while we were puzzling over our accounts that the box from Bibendum came round the door.

Horsell's Farm Enterprises was looking bad when we opened the first bottle - the pure, fresh Pinot Blanc from Alois Lageder in the Südtirol, or Alto Adige, as the Italians know this region that they snatched - or liberated - from the Austrians, depending how you look at it. Expenditure was up, income was down and, to put it frankly, ends had not been met. We turned glumly from the numbers to the label on the bottle, which told us that all Alois Lageder's activities in the cellar are sustainable. Lucky man, we thought.

The Crozes-Hermitage from Domaine du Colombier proved a perfect match for our liver and bacon - smooth and full, with all the exuberant fruit of Syrah at its best, and a wildflower aroma that cheered us with the thought of summer. We looked again at the figures, and they began to add up. Our feelings were even more positive after the Morgon from Mommessin. There are those who turn up their noses at Beaujolais, believing with Duke Philip the Bold that the Gamay grape has no business in the region. This single-village Beaujolais, with enough bottle age to take the edge off the grape-skin, is a real delight. It has a flowery presence and a sweet and eager flavour like a kiss. By the end of the bottle, the credit columns were swelling visibly, and the debit trembling on the verge of extinction. It needed only the Dinastía Vivanco Rioja to breathe all over the page with its hoary, oaken breath and the figures dissolved entirely, to be replaced with scattered black notes like a page of plainsong, which we sang as we staggered to bed.

The next day, the figures had unaccountably returned to the page, though somewhat the worse for wear, many of them ringed with red-wine stains, and one particularly nasty debit item so enlarged that it looked like a crawling spider. Our activities in the cellar were clearly not going to be as sustainable as Herr Lageder's. There was nothing for it but to finish off the wine from Bibendum, and plan for a different kind of future - with prolonged periods of Lenten abstinence.

The delicious Pouilly Fumé cleared what remained of the morning's hangover and prepared us for a simple meal of sausages and spinach, washed down with the excellent and unpretentious St Émilion. This wine will appeal to our readers, being the product of a genuine co-operative, and one devoted to a trade which, because it could never be run by the state, must always balance its books.

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