I WAS born in 1951. Luckily, my parents had neither the finances nor the knowledge to lay down a few bottles of wine for me to enjoy on reaching my 21st birthday, as the age of majority then was. My birth year was a disastrous vintage wine-wise and it would have been undrinkable well before I received the key of the door.
The practice of buying bottles or even cases of wine for loved ones and friends is not anew custom, although it was once reserved for those with both the money and the knowledge of fine wines and port, who could make an informed choice of
