By contrast, Sebastian Flyte knows about wine, and knows what wine is good for. Everyone remembers the baroque wine-tasting scene at Brideshead, and the far-fetched, impressionistic, terms Sebastian and Charles use for the wines they drink. But already, when Sebastian calls on Charles and takes him for the first time to Brideshead, the choice of wine shows taste and knowledge:

"You're to come away at once, out of danger. I've got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Château Peyraguey — which isn't a wine you've ever tasted, so don't pretend. It's heaven with strawberries."

Now known as Ch. Lafaurie-Peyraguey, and in 1855 ranked third among the wines of Sauternes after Yquem and La Tour-Blanche, this is indeed a sublime wine with soft fruit, to which it is better adapted than a more luscious Sauternes such as, to take an extreme example, Rieussec (at least as it is currently made).

What Sebastian understands, at least until he becomes an alcoholic, and what Charles through Sebastian's friendship also comes to see, is that wine ministers to the sense of being alive as do few other things. It is a secular shadow of that grace which Sebastian never quite forsakes, no matter how degraded he comes to seem in the eyes of the world. That is why it is not merely a casual choice of word when Sebastian says that Lafaurie-Peyraguey is "heaven" with strawberries.