On the rack: Michael Seresin on his cellar and a Burgundy that left him speechless

A recent discovery is Granato by Foradori in Trentino, northeast Italy. It’s made by Elisabetta Foradori from the Teroldego grape – we had it at the Venice Film Festival and I bought some to take home.

I’ve also got a few bottles of Nicolas Joly’s Clos de la Coulée de Serrant Savennières. I mainly drink Italian reds and have Eduardo Torres Acosta’s Versante Nord Nerello Mascalese from Etna on the rack.

It’s all kept together in a series of racks in the basement of my London home. For everyday drinking it’s Italian labels or Côtes du Rhône. I’ve got wines dating back to the 1930s and some are well beyond drinking. It’s that culture of holding onto things.

When I was living in Rome in the 1960s, I’d go to the beach and these kids would come up and shout ‘frizzante’. They’d have a bottle of Frascati, sparkling water and ice, and they’d give you a glass for 100 lira.

I got seriously into wine when I started travelling to Tuscany in the 1970s with my wife and made friends with the Stucchi Prinetti family, who own Badia a Coltibuono in Chianti.

If I’m hosting, like I did for Jancis Robinson and her husband Nicholas Lander the other night, I like to buy a big fish, like a two-kilo turbot, cook it over an open fire and serve it with a serious white Burgundy, like Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet. I’m more of a Burgundy guy than a Bordeaux man.

I used to go to Hereford Road in Notting Hill, west London, every week until it closed [in 2024], so now one of my favourite places is Jeremy King’s The Park nearby in Queensway. It’s beautiful inside, with a good wine list. I always order the chicken Milanese and the Monte Bernardi Chianti Classico.

There’s a fantastic little place in Siena called Osteria le Logge that has an incredible wine list. The owner took me down a spiral staircase to the cellar in an ancient Etruscan tunnel and they had French and Italian wines going back forever.

I tend to buy from merchant Thorman Hunt and The Great Wine Co, the retail outlet of distributor Enotria. I don’t buy from the supermarket. I only go twice a month for oranges and bananas – everything else I buy from farmers’ markets.

If we’re talking Champagne, then a magnum of vintage Krug or Perrier-Jouët Belle Epoque. When it comes to reds, then it would have to be Domaine de la Romanée-Conti – I have a bottle of Richebourg 2007, Romanée-St-Vivant 1997 and Grands Echézeaux 1942 from my birth year.

It was in Tuscany, in winter. My friend, winemaking consultant Maurizio Castelli poured me a glass of red from a decanter. We put our noses into our glasses and couldn’t speak for five minutes. It was a Domaine Rapet Père et Fils Burgundy. We still talk about it all these years later.

A Château Latour from the early 1900s that I drank at Jean-Georges in New York at a dinner hosted by multi-billionaire Eddie Milstein, who owns Remoissenet Père et Fils in Beaune. The other two wines he brought were undrinkable, but the Latour was beyond stunning. Pure alchemy.

Pinot Noir, because it’s a complex and heart-driven wine. It’s the heartbreak grape and more than a few people have said that about me. There’s something magical about it. It can stop you in your tracks. When you’re drinking a good Pinot, life stops and pleasure takes over.