The geologists hurried to explain that it had been printed on tree pulp and stiffened with clay

The geologists hurried to explain that it had been printed on tree pulp and stiffened with clay. It was dyed with titanium dioxide, the same mineral responsible for the white of our dinner plates.Other minerals contributed to the coloured patterning; had we been dining in the 1930s, they said, yellow patterning would have been provided by uranium salts. However, uranium production was soon to be diverted to make the first atom bombs This lesson could go on all night, but enough is enough. The wine is nice, anyway.Step forward Professor Henderson, with two bottles of Beaujolais. Both are made from the Gamay grape, and produced no more than three kilometres apart, he says. How is it possible they should taste so different? We sip away. The Moulin-a-Vent is the tougher of the two - metallic, slightly bitter, almost like a young claret in its hardness.

The Morgon, we agree, is by contrast flowery, fruity and open.Dr Taylor explains, as you may already have guessed, that the answer lies in the soil - or at least in the sub-soil "The Moulin-a-Vent is grown on a substrate of granite. Morgon is grown on schist."Schist? Metamorphosed rock, explains John Simmons - rock that has been changed, compressed, heated and folded to such an extent that a completely new texture emerges and new minerals develop.And that's why Morgon tastes as it does? Yup. And four other fruity Beaujolais appellations grow on the schist - Brouilly, Cote-de-Brouilly, Julienas and St-Amour. On the granite grows the other Beaujolais, Moulin-a-Vent, together with Fleurie, Chiroubles and Chenas. You should be able to taste the difference between the two groups.Our tasting seems to confirm the geologists' theory. It also provides a new word for wine buffs and wine bluffers - "schistosity" But wait a minute. These wines were made in different years: the Moulin-a-Vent in 1992, the Morgon in 1991.

Surely each year's weather conditions affect the flavour of the grapes differently? Martine Benoit claps her hands with obvious glee "Oh, good," she says. "We'll have to do the whole thing all over again." (Fade out completely.) !. FOR more than 20 years, Pool Court, set in a dainty country house on the fringes of Wharfedale, scaled almost unrivalled heights of poshness in the Yorkshire eating-out scene This was not merely a question of its Michelin star. As my mother, who lives nearby, put it: "It was the place to eat.