Nine Wines to Take on a Picnic

When I was a kid, I thought that picnics must be pretty damned cool and racy events, because I was familiar with Manet's great painting Dejeuner sur l'herbes

that hangs in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. In the book of reproductions that I looked at constantly, the two men and two women depicted in the work were described as "dining al fresco," and since on…