Plot

Richard Pratt, a wine expert, wagers he can identify any wine.

Richard Pratt, a pretentious wine expert, is one of several dinner party guests at the home of stockbroker Mike Schofield. Pratt claims to be able to identify any wine from its bouquet but Schofield has picked a really rare wine that he is so convinced Pratt will fail to recognize, that he includes his house and his daughter in the wager to everyone else's horror -- particularly when Pratt guesses it right. Fortunately for the rest of the family the dutiful housekeeper has discovered Mr. Pratt's glasses in a room where they should not be.—don @ minifie-1

For a long time, Richard Pratt (Ron Moody) and Mike Schofield (Anthony Carrick) have had an amiable joust based around Pratt's expertise as a wine expert. The show opens with Pratt successfully identifying what he refers to as "easy" wines on a TV programme. At the end of the programme, he leaves for a dinner party at the Schofield's. He has designs upon the teenage daughter and presents her with a "paperback" of his recent book Great Post War Vintages, inscribed from her "Admirer". Before the meal, everyone is asked to extinguish their cigarettes/pipes and Pratt retires to gargle with soda water to cleanse his palate. The meal proceeds, and the wine of subject is presented. It has been chambreed, opened and then held on the green filing cabinet in Scholfield's study, without draughts at room temperature as agreed a long time ago by Pratt and Schofield to best present its characteristics. So certain is Schofield that THIS TIME he has an unfathomable wine, that he is prepared to wager anything. Pratt requests £10,000 and then the hand of Schofield's daughter. This is agreed, with Pratt offering his town and country houses as counter bet. With great showmanship and exposition of the oenologist's art, Pratt gradually homes in on the obscure vineyard and vintage with unerring accuracy. He wholly identifies the wine, after many theatricals, as 1934 Château Branaire-Ducru. Schofiled is devastated. He sees his life, reputation and, most of all, or least of all?, his daughter disappearing. He starts to wrangle about the wager, but Pratt is having none of it and claims the other dinner guests as witnesses. Then in comes the cook/housekeeper. She places Pratt's spectacles by his dinner plate. "You left them in the study, sir. On top of the green filing cabinet. When you went in there by yourself before dinner. With a soda syphon." Schofield's wife advises him to remain calm...