To absent friends

We'd decided a while ago that our Christmas Day drinking would be two of the most precious bottles in our collection. Not because they were hugely prestigious, old or wildly expensive but because their producers are both sadly dead and we only have a few bottles left of the wines they made.

The first was Stéphane Cossais' Montlouis Le Volagre 2006 which is, without doubt, one of the best dry Chenins I've tasted - intensely mineral but full of apricots and quince and cream. It could easily have been a top white Burgundy.

The other was Marcel Lapierre's 2009 Morgon, a brilliant Beaujolais from an exceptional year, full of gloriously vivid fruit that made us feel happy - and lucky - to be alive. It was a perfect bottle to drink with the Christmas turkey

They would have been wonderful wines to give someone who was sceptical about natural wines, as I confess I was a year ago, and who was inclined to dub them all weird and funky. They both had an incredible purity of fruit - wines that made you feel inspired and privileged to drink them.

We enjoyed them on our own (apart from one of our non-drinking children) which is sometimes a good way to savour a great wine. We never met Stéphane but reminisced about our wonderful afternoon with Marcel.

I hope you had an equally good Christmas. Do share what you had to drink.