To absent friends

A search of Listener issues from ages past reveals the lack of classy wines was long lamented.

- BY MICHAEL COOPER

To the average New Zealander, the pleasures of the table are not all-important; he looks on eating as a necessity, rather than as one of the graces." That's from the Listener, October 13, 1950. But in the same issue, the manager of a large hotel noted: “Fortunately with a growing demand for table wines, an increased supply of the better Continental wines is gradually becoming available.”

Midway through last century, the domestic industry had yet to capitalise on our potential to produce high-quality table wine.

The archives of the first 20 years of the NZ Listener, 1939-59, were published in June on the National Library's Papers Past website. I searched for references to wine from 1950-54.