A Vintage Murder

A vineyard launching a new sparkling wine should be a cheerful afternoon, but the guests start collapsing at the tasting, and it falls to Kate Wilding to work out why. The answer is in the glasses: they have been laced with slug pellets. Lisa Holdsworth wrote this one with Caroline Graham, and Nicholas Laughland directed, and they have the good sense to let the absurdity sit next to the seriousness.

Barnaby and Nelson take over from there, and the vineyard becomes a stage full of people who all have a claim on the business. Claire Bloom's Matilda Stowe is the sort of grand old lady who has been in the valley for decades, and Mark Bonnar's William Carnarvon looks like he has been waiting for this bottle for years. The Tylers are out in force: Sabrina Bartlett's Tina, Rosie Cavaliero's Judy, and Wayne Foskett's Roger. Max Bennett's Kevin Paynton keeps his own counsel, which in a murder case is a red flag in itself. The launch party brings them all into one room, which is probably what the killer wanted.

The slug pellets are the kind of detail only Midsomer would use, and the episode leans into it without winking at the audience. Poison is poison, whether it comes from a chemist or a garden shed. The tasting notes take on a different flavour once the glasses are emptied and tested.

The wine itself becomes the evidence, which is a neat trick, and the tasting that started as a celebration ends as a line of questioning. The local rivalries run deep enough to have started long before the first bottle was pressed, and the vineyard's history gets raked over vine by vine.

But it is a comfortable, well-made episode, the sort that reminds you why the formula works. Even the champagne flutes are dangerous.