Boswell didn't specify what this "rich gold wine" was, and it's not easy to come up with plausible suggestions as to what it might have been. He seems never to have kept Sauternes or Barsac. The Mountain he did keep and like, although intensely sweet and rich, was more likely to be brown in colour than golden. It may have been a bottle of Sitgis.

Whatever the wine was, it clearly gave pleasure, but there were not to be many more such moments for Boswell. On April 14 the following year he was taken ill while in London at the Club. He was succumbing to kidney failure and uraemia, aggravated by persistent heavy drinking and repeated infections of gonorrhea. He died on May 19, aged 54.