This really is a true story. A member of a family that owns one of the world’s most prestigious wine properties invites a mutual friend to dinner in Paris. Perhaps because he’s caught up in the zeitgeist he thinks it would be a cool idea to choose an organic restaurant. Perhaps he was bored with the three-star Michelin fare that is the everyday dining of people who inhabit the rarefied air at the top of the food chain. They land up at a place that looked “promising” and “interesting” —  until they were presented with the wine list.

Organic food restaurants naturally serve organically certified wines. Nothing on the carte des vins had even a whiff of familiarity, so they were left with no alternative but to take a stab at it and see what happened when the cork was pulled. By all accounts this was not a perfect strategy. They enjoyed the food well enough but had to live with Lenten pickings from the cellar. Perhaps if they had approached the wine selection as a voyage of discove...