Vintage View: The perfect picnic

Kya deLongchamps skips out to the garden for a traditional-style picnic, with a little help from our wine expert, Leslie Williams

Preparing the perfect picnic is no picnic: Read our tips and how to serve tipples to impress your guests. Picture: iStock

THERE'S something egalitarian about nestling on the grass together. No, no — behave! Honestly. You lot.

The picnic harkens back to that mid-day collapse in the fields during farm-work, devouring a pasty made up of flour, water and the end of Sunday dinner. It was a banal, pastoral happening idealised by painters of the period (most of whom had never experienced harvesting with bleeding hands). However, the term, picnic, has more oddly grand beginnings.