Still, Johnson's bombthrowing will draw the most attention. Parker is a convenient target, but Johnson draws a direct comparison between America’s influence on the wine market and its dominant geopolitical clout. (“Imperial hegemony lives in Washington,” he put in the book.)

It isn't so much about wine, he explains as he works through his fish (“sturgeon at its best, I must say”), as what he considers “an American weakness” for dictating cultural taste in absolute terms. “It goes with the territory, really: ‘We want a firm decision now.’ And I simply don’t believe in that. … Firm decisions are not always available.”

Johnson is equally dismissive of the 100-point rating system, arguably inaugurated by Parker but now in wide use. “I simply don’t know what he means. I know what the results are, but I don’t know what it means. I simply can’t get my head around the notion that one wine is a 98 and one’s a 95. Can you?”

Worse, he argues, the scores — and an American bias toward bolder flavors — have driven winemakers to make overly dense wines with high alcohol levels. (That view is shared among many of Johnson's colleagues. When I later mention these comments, an American writer replies, “God, anyone but the British!”)

We arrive at another of Johnson’s sore spots: modern drinkers’ refusal to age their wines. He deems our riesling too young, but admires the wine I toted along: a 1990 Mountain Dome brut from Washington. Johnson doesn't hide his fondness for bubbles, and this is an unabashed play to his palate.

“Oh, I really have to add this to the collection,” he says, checking the label.

The 16-year-old bottle serves to further emphasize his points. “There are several reasons why you really love it now. It’s a memory, it’s an experience. It proves something about ageability, and it offers elements that are not ... available if you’ve got the latest in your glass, that is. It’s very much the point of wine to me.”

What next?
Now 67, Johnson has a new “Atlas” edition due next year, and with a memoir added to his bibliography, there’s not much terrain left to cover. His magazine and newspaper duties have largely been passed on. Despite his role as host of a 1991 13-part series, he sees little appeal in wine on TV. There will be no blog.

“To a certain extent I drop out,” he says. “At my age I don’t have the same sort of industry.”

Or perhaps his other pursuits will take greater focus. An avid horticulturist, Johnson penned an authoritative 1979 book and dozens of articles on gardening; his Saling Hall garden is a local tourist destination. As the server moves us to dessert, Johnson spies an ailing hydrangea nearby and asks for a glass of water. The request is repeated, again and again, until a pitcher arrives.

“If you’re not going to water it, then I’ll water it,” Johnson tells the incredulous waiter. “I’m a gardener. I’m not letting it die!”

The hydrangea is revived; dessert is served. The complex array of sweets — Napoleon and millefeuille pastries and sorbets in various configurations — would dictate sweet wine, but Johnson beelines for glasses of red: a 1997 Barolo and a 1998 Côte-Rotie. He parses the restaurant’s hefty wine list, eyeing favorites, contemplating multiple vintages of Cheval Blanc, pooh-poohing the notion of trophy wines: “I can never imagine shelling out $1,200 on a restaurant bottle.”

There is much more: praise for Napa for focusing on its strengths; high hopes for vineyard development in Eastern Europe (notably Romania), China and India; and finally, one last insistence that wine belongs in its place, not viewed through the prism of its score but enjoyed as part of a larger whole.

“I think you cannot be too openminded about wine,” he says as we near our last sips, “and I think one of the problems, if I can be critical of my contemporaries and colleagues, is that they get too close in and too exclusive and they tend to forget what everything is about.”

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