Roald Dahl's Letter From Gipsy House: The Claret in His Cellar

In December 1986 Roald Dahl wrote to Alan and Sue Johnson-Hill at Château Méaume from Gipsy House, his home in Great Missenden. He told them he kept around 600 cases of claret in the cellar beneath the house, that Méaume had a regular place among them, and that it was served every Sunday to "a large party of appreciative snooker players". The letter, dated 22 December 1986 and signed by Dahl, is still at the château, and it is one of the most treasured things we own.

What did Roald Dahl's letter say?

The letter is short, warm and arrived out of the blue. Dahl wrote to thank the family for their wine and to tell them how much of it he had been drinking. "I have kept a good stock of Méaume," he wrote. "It is always delicious."

He explained that the cellar under Gipsy House held around 600 cases of claret, which tells you how seriously he took his Bordeaux, and that Méaume was a wine he returned to rather than one he had tried once. Besides the Sunday snooker, he mentioned that it came out on other occasions too. He closed by saying that when he and his wife were next in Bordeaux, they might drop in.

Alan and Sue had arrived at Château Méaume in 1978, so by 1986 they had been running the estate for eight years. The letter has been kept carefully at the château ever since. You can read more about the family and how the estate passed to Mark and Sandra in our story since 1978.

Gipsy House, the cellar and the Sunday snooker

Gipsy House is the house in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, that Dahl and his first wife, Patricia Neal, bought in 1954. He lived there for the rest of his life, and most of his best-loved children's books were written in the small hut in its garden. The house also had a snooker room, which was later moved into a separate building in the grounds, and Dahl's Sunday games were a fixture of life there.

Gipsy House is still a private family home and is not open to visitors. The writing hut, though, was moved to the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre on Great Missenden's High Street, where you can see it today along with his manuscripts and letters. If you are visiting the village, the museum is the place to go.

What the letter adds is a glimpse of the house as Dahl actually lived in it in the 1980s: a cellar full of claret below, a snooker table above, and a bottle of Bordeaux from a family estate on the Right Bank open on the side every Sunday.

Roald Dahl and claret: the story behind "Taste"

Dahl's love of claret was no secret. One of his best-known short stories, "Taste", first published in The New Yorker in December 1951 and collected in "Someone Like You" in 1953, is built entirely around it. At a London dinner party, a famous wine expert named Richard Pratt bets that he can name the vineyard and vintage of the claret his host is serving. The stakes climb until the host's daughter's hand in marriage is on the table, and Pratt works his way down through Bordeaux, commune by commune, to a precise answer.

We won't spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't read it, except to say that it is pure Dahl. The story was later adapted for "Tales of the Unexpected" in 1980, and it is still one of the most enjoyable things ever written about the theatre of a wine tasting.

The wine in the story is a Médoc from the Left Bank. The wine in Dahl's own cellar, at least on Sundays, was ours: a Merlot-led claret from the Right Bank, the softer and rounder side of Bordeaux. If you have ever wondered what separates the two, our guide to what claret actually is explains the word, the wines and how to choose one.

What would Dahl have been drinking?

We don't know exactly which vintages Dahl kept, and we would rather say so than guess. What we do know is that by 1986 the Johnson-Hills had been at Château Méaume since 1978, making wine from the same vineyard we farm today, with Merlot at its heart.

In August 2026 we opened sixty consecutive vintages from 1966 to 2025 and tasted them side by side, which included every year Dahl could have been buying. It was a remarkable way to see how the wines of that era have aged, and you can read what we found in our sixty vintage vertical tasting. The wine has been made on this estate since 1795, and the blend today is 90% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Franc and 2% Cabernet Sauvignon.

Did Roald Dahl ever visit Château Méaume?

Sadly, no. He said in his letter that he and his wife might call in when they were next in Bordeaux, but the visit never happened, and Dahl died four years later. We like to think he would have enjoyed it.

Quick answers

Where did Roald Dahl live? At Gipsy House in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, from 1954 for the rest of his life.

Can you visit Gipsy House? No, it is a private family home. Dahl's writing hut is on display at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre on Great Missenden High Street.

Did Roald Dahl like wine? Very much. In a 1986 letter to Château Méaume he wrote that he kept around 600 cases of claret in his cellar at Gipsy House.

What is Roald Dahl's short story about wine? "Taste", first published in The New Yorker in 1951, in which a wine expert bets he can identify a claret by vineyard and vintage.

What wine did Roald Dahl drink with his snooker friends? According to his own letter, Château Méaume, a claret from the Right Bank of Bordeaux, served every Sunday.

A letter worth keeping

Dahl's letter is a small thing, a page of thanks from a man who clearly loved his claret, but it says a lot about what a family Bordeaux estate is for. Our wine was opened on Sundays among friends, without ceremony, and enjoyed enough that he took the trouble to write and say so. The best thing we can do with that is keep making wine people want to open in the same way.

You can find the same wine on our Right Bank Bordeaux wines page. Our official online shop opens separately so you can choose your delivery country, select your wines and complete your order securely, and our shop delivers to over 50 countries.

If you would rather taste it where it is made, stay in our farmhouse on the vineyard. It sleeps up to 10, and Mark will happily open a bottle in the cellar and tell you the story of the letter.