The Bordeaux Club

The Bordeaux Club is Neil McKendrick's history of a dining club that met for seventy years to drink the greatest wines of Bordeaux.

Twelve friends, a standard about what would be opened, and minutes kept for fifty-seven of those years by a Cambridge historian with a raconteur's ear. The membership is much of the pleasure — Hugh Johnson, Michael Broadbent and Steven Spurrier among the tasters, with the historian Sir John Plumb supplying the blunter verdicts — and so are the rooms, from country houses to a college master's lodge and one or two Dickensian boardrooms. Through it pass the Médoc first growths at their peak, the 1865, 1929, 1945 and 1961 vintages, and cellar bargains bought for a pound apiece.

A book for claret drinkers and for anyone who enjoys English social history told through what was in the decanter. It runs on gossip as much as tasting note, which makes it a livelier present than most wine books manage.