Adrian Chiles’s article on the importance of the first drink struck a chord, and I remembered mine (Grandma had just died and I was far from home. Then I had a drink – and the pain vanished, 12 October). I too was on a school exchange, aged 14.
Bristol and Bordeaux had a long history around the wine trade and, in the late 1950s, what must have been one of the earliest and biggest school exchange systems. I had never been abroad before but, unlike Adrian, I had the good fortune to be paired up with Annie for a whole month, with whom I formed a lifelong friendship. Her father was a wine producer in Barsac and, almost as soon as I arrived, he wanted me to try his wonderful wines.
