Madan's entries on the subject of wine are of various kinds. Some of them are pithy definitions of semi-technical terms, such as Druitt's useful remark that "Body [...] means that the wine holds in solution a large quantity of matter capable of being tested by the nerves of taste." Others might convey practical wisdom, such as the annotation on the wine list of the Lion d'Or at Bayeux, "Je ne fais pas chambrer les vins de Bourgogne."  Another class of entry preserves for posterity unfashionable attitudes which might otherwise be lost, such as the advice a  clergyman gave to Sidgwick in 1847: "Don't get drunk before dinner: you can't really enjoy it."

But Madan also carefully collected the bizarre beliefs and practices which attach themselves to wine, such as the three baffling warnings given to him over dinner by an aged clergyman: "1. Never drink claret in an East wind. 2. Take your pleasures singly, one by one. 3. Never sit on a hard chair after drinking port." He was intrigued by the idiosyncrasies of the great, such as Queen Victoria "strengthening" (as Gladstone put it in a letter to his wife) claret with whisky. He might be charmed by the errors of the innocent, such as the shy woman holding out a Savoy brandy-glass and saying, "Only half-full, thank you." And he particularly enjoyed the freedom of the expert to do what the amateur would have feared to do, thinking it a blunder. One of his favourite anecdotes was that of Amyas Warre, of the port house, putting a tiny piece of ice into a glass of port at a dinner in his honour.

Connoisseurship falls under suspicion today. It is liable to be disparaged as elitist, pompous, impressionistic and pointless, a kind of bogus expertise on subjects which will stubbornly remain matters of mere opinion, and where one man's opinion is as good as any other's. But the dégustations of life, wine and books contained in Madan's notebooks remind us of different, and more positive, possibilities in connoisseurship, at least if pursued in Madan's undogmatic and gentle spirit. Such connoisseurship seeks out and preserves the fugitive, the delicate, and fragile. It offers shelter and preservation to all those frail but precious things with which more downright and systematic dispositions are impatient, and which wilt or wither in their presence. Wine, which is both transient and to be relished — and relished partly because of its transience-encourages such mild and humane connoisseurship.