Wine. It was a curse of high-society. All those idiots that thought you could taste cherries or spices or how old the bloody vine was thought the tasted of crushed and rotting fruit were . And Richard knew about pretentious. That was the very reason he was here- he was here because tonight this was where everyone was and would be seen, and that was the very reason he was carrying a glass of the judiciously over-priced grape juice and pretending he was loving every second of it.
Why? Because if he didn't then those people in the world who disliked him, and he knew there were quite a few of them, would use the opportunity to present him as unrefined, a slob with no taste or class. And that was not something he wanted in the slightest.