Getting it right

I've just about finished reading the new wine books that filled my Christmas stocking, but once again it was a funny little book already in my possession, first published in 1954, that afforded me the most amusement over the holidays.
In his foreword to this, the third (1966) edition of C de Bosdari's Wines of the Cape, PO Sauer describes it as the first book on South African wines which will help our wine-drinkers to understand what they are drinking, how it is made and why it is good'. (It is also good for us, claims the author: Wine-drinkers, as a rule, are very healthy people, the sort of people who shamelessly turn up to bury their teetotal friends')