What is the ideal gift or present for a man who’s turning forty? Possibly an Aston Martin if your budget is limitless, but for those of us in the real world we need to find an affordable present!

At forty you’d expect he has a fully furnished house, which the wife has filled with ornaments. He’s already set up with his ipod and plasma tv, he’s got his golf clubs and his playstation. So what can you buy him? 40 is the big one so you don’t just want to give a tin of biscuits, it has to be something special and thoughtful. The answer is simple – good wine! We’re not talking about a £5 bottle of plonk from the local off license - that shows no thought or effort whatsoever. We’re talking about something exotic and unusual, maybe a single bottle of something exceptional or possibly a whole case of good wines if your budget’s big enough.

Everyone’s drinking wine these days, and even those of us who ten years ago used to drink a pint of ale from a handled glass are exploring wine and looking for something better than the plonk on the shelves in the supermarket. It’s a fascinating world which is becoming a ‘hobby’ for many people, as good wine is becoming more widely available.

So you’ve decided his present is good wine then, but now where do you start? There’s an awful lot of expensive wine out there which frankly isn’t good. Remember Britain is viewed as ‘the toilet of Europe’ by our European cousins in the wine trade, who’s attitude when they have bad wine is simply ‘put a fancy label on it and sell it in the UK at an extortionate price’. According to renowned wine writer Malcolm Gluck, the European wine trade have a term for the naive UK consumer – ‘Indian customer’, which means someone who can be conned into paying a hefty price for poor wine! So beware! My advice is avoid anything French as it’s all overpriced and under quality. There are some sensational wines coming out of new world countries like Argentina, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Italy’s also a great country for top quality wines but deciphering their labels can be a minefield for the inexperienced!

If you’re looking for something special visit www.goodwineonline.co.uk who import a range of exclusive hand made wines, often made in tiny quantities of only a thousand bottles or so. But this doesn’t mean they’re expensive! In fact they have a policy of ensuring they’re the cheapest retailer of each of their wines. They have some truly impressive limited production wines from all the main wine producing countries, with superb presentation. They offer a ‘life saving’ next working day delivery service too ( for only£8.99 for any quantity) which can get you out of trouble if a birthday’s snuck up on you by suprise! They also include a complimentay (hand written) card if required, so you can send a personalised gift anywhere in the UK next day with the click of a mouse! That’s my kind of shopping!

Partly due to the new year and partly due to the odd recent health scare, I’ve taken a critical look at my lifestyle recently. We discuss this with friends and I also get comments from other people and it’s lead me to some pretty unpleasant conclusions. I always blamed everything on stress due to overwork as I’ve worked seven days a week for the last eleven years with the odd holiday, only having a day off on Christmas Day (which is more stressful than work anyway) and New Year’s Day – which was a day off!

I’ve been constantly tired, stressed and over weight. But why? I didn’t eat breakfast, most days I’d work through lunch and either eat nothing at all or possibly get a sandwich around 3pm. I’d only eat a decent meal once a day in the evening, usually washed down by a bottle of wine.

However, since I did a bit of research, I’m now eating breakfast every day, stopping for lunch and eating in the evening. I’m eating far more but losing weight (and fat!). I’m now exercising – something I didn’t get time for before, cutting out unhealthy fast foods and reducing my alcohol intake. I feel and look much better and have more energy. 11 more years of this and I’ll be back to normal!

But seriously, the one big issue this did throw up is ‘what am I actually eating and drinking’? I’ve concluded that I’ve been steadily poisoning myself with processed foods and over chemicalled processed drinks for years. This was highlighted in the Channel 4 programme Dispatches when they revealed the cocktail of potent chemicals put into factory produced wines. If the same regulations were applied to wine as food these ‘wines’ would legally have to have over 40 different chemicals on the back label. According to Malcolm Gluck, there are over 80 different chemicals added to some cheap branded South African wines!

It’s exactly the same with food, although the producers get around the labelling issue by listing E numbers rather than the chemicals’ names. E220 or E227 doesn’t sad too bad does it? Well it can if you’re asthmatic. E227 is banned in Australia but is widely used by various countries to preserve tinned vegetables for the Asian export market where it’s not illegal. I heard recently of someone having an allergic reaction to a tinned mushroom (containing E228) and actually dying, only to luckily be revived by a passer by several times, who managed to keep reviving him till medical help arrived.

These allergic reactions have been largely ignored by the corporations and governments in the interest of profit. Did you know the percentage of children with allergies in developing countries like India is around 2%? But in the last 40 years in Australia – since the introduction of processed foods and E numbers – it has increased from 2% to 30%! Is that coincidence? What about the increase in stomach and throat cancers?

More and more people like myself are looking to cut out the additives. I won’t drink UK brewed lagers anymore because they’re pumped full of chemicals. As well as the nasty long term effects they also give horrendous hangovers. Most people associate a hangover with drinking too much alcohol, but this isn’t the case. It’s not the alcohol that gives you the hangover it’s the other chemicals present in the drinks. I regularly drink 7 pints of Dortmunder at my friend’s restaurant. It’s brewed in Germany to the purity laws, and although it’s a hefty 5% abv, and I do get a bit tipsy, I don’t get any hangover whatsoever and I feel great in the morning.

It’s the same with wine. I can drink one glass of a brand like Blossom Hill or Kumala, and it makes me feel physically sick. The amounts of chemicals that are legally allowed in these wines are frankly shocking -  and that’s legally allowed remember. There was an instance recently in Australia where one wine had a remarkable 17 times the legal limit of sulphites in it! That’s enough to kill an asmathic person stone dead on the spot!

I drink only good wine, made naturally by people who have a passion for what they produce. No adverse effects whatsoever, even if I over indulge and have 3 bottles! More people are doing the same, cutting out this branded rubbish which should contain a government health warning, and switching to naturally made wines. They’re readily available, with one website www.goodwineonline.co.uk specialising in top quality low sulphite wines. Their prices are highly competitive, they have an excellent selection and offer next day delivery, so there really is no need to keep drinking this mass produced dross – and no need for any more hangovers!

The Vinturi wine aerater is a fast and simple way to let your good red wine ‘breathe’ so you can enjoy it immediately without having to wait for an hour for it to open up.

Clearly there are huge benefits to this system for many people. Firstly for the red wine lovers amongst us enjoying a bottle at home. How many times have we opened a big red such as an Amarone or a top Bordeaux blend and poured out a glass and spent endless minutes swilling it to aerate it. Only the surface of the wine is in contact with the air so this technique doesn’t really do the job. Then will the second glass taste anything like the first? What if we want to top up our guests glasses before they’ve emptied them?

We could of course decant the wine, assuming we own a decanter. Again this is a little tricky, a steady hand is needed to avoid spillage – and wastage, and watch that bit of sediment sliding down the bottle neck – too late, it’s in the decanter! Now try and pour from the decanter into your glass! We also want our guests to know what they’re drinking. If I’ve splashed out £30 plus on an Amarone I’d like my friends to appreciate it and admire the bottle and savour the wine - not have the next door neighbour pour herself a pint from the decanter thinking it’s come from a 3 litre Tesco box! I like to introduce my friends to different wines to expand tasting experiences, so rather than have several bottles of the same wine I prefer to have several different ones to compare and discuss. If we’re having three different reds over the course of an evening how many decanters will we need? And, by the end of the night, will we remember which wine is in each one?

With the Vinturi you simply pour your wine through the device into your glass. During the process the unique design sucks in just the right amount of air to aerate your wine and it’s ready to drink. The Vinturi Delux has it’s own stand so you place your glass on the stand under the Vinturi and pour your wine through – simple. It works on a vacuum system, no batteries or mechanical parts to go wrong, and after use simply flush it by pouring through some water.

Does it really work?

Yes. I’ve tried it on several big reds by pouring one glass straight from the bottle, the other through the Vinturi. The Vinturi wine has a noticeable increase in aroma and flavour immediately. In fact the system is so successful that Vinturi are being used in Michelin starred restaurants in the USA and the UK.

How much? Where can I buy one?

They’re widely available from wine merchants and gadget retailers. The standard Vinturi has a retail price of £39.95 and the Delux £59.95. Personally I’d splash out on the delux model. A few retailers are discounting them by a couple of pounds but the best value for a Vinturi is www.goodwineonline.co.uk who include a free bottle of Rapitala Rosso IGT Sicilia (worth £8.67) on the standard model, or a free bottle of the superb award winning Zevenwacht Syrah Stellenbosch (worth £14.95) on the Delux model. After all, you’ll want a good bottle of wine to try it on!

Yes, yet again we have more price increases on the way. With VAT having been restored to 17.5% a case of wine at £10 per bottle now costs an additional £2.50, which goes straight to the Treasury. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Further increases are imminent. From Darling’s budget two years ago, Excise Duty is set to increase by 2% ‘above the rate of inflation’ which is currently at 2.9% this month. That means an additional 5% Duty which is 8 pence per bottle plus VAT of course, on wines under 15%abv. Wines above this, and sparkling wines, will increase by even more.

So this will mean Excise Duty on a bottle of wine from an EU country will be approximately £1.70. Wines from outside the EU also attract a separate Customs Tax. So if a bottle of wine sells for £10 there’s £1.49 VAT and £1.70 Excise Duty – £3.19 going straight to the Treasury. That’s £38.28 on a case of 12!

If a wine sells for £5 a bottle, there’s still £1.70 Excise Duty with 75 pence VAT – £2.45 in total taxes. If you allow for production costs, bottling, labelling, packaging, international shipping, UK transport, importer’s margin and retailer’s margin – all coming out of the remaining £2.55 – then how good do you think a £5 wine will be? According to renowned wine journalist Malcolm Gluck, the supermarkets work on a margin around 33% so they would be making £1.67 per bottle, leaving just 88 pence to cover all the other costs including the producer’s! So we can clearly see how the UK government and the supermarkets are responsible for driving down the quality of wine available in the UK and at the same time driving wine producers out of business.

Sadly the days of buying a decent bottle of wine, made traditionally with minimal additives, for £5 are long gone, never to return. £10 is now the benchmark figure for a reasonable wine, and closer to £20 for something special. It’s likely that taxes will keep increasing year on year so if you’ve got some spare cash now’s a good time to buy some decent wine and lay it down.

More and more people are looking to buy good Argentinian Malbec, or to use the new correct adjective, good Argentine Malbec, as it’s quality has recently been widely publicised. It’s the grape that helped put Argentina in the spotlight in the wine world, as the Argentinian (Argentine!) producers are able to craft some exceptional wines from this grape, unmatched by any other country in the world. If you’re looking to buy good Argentinian Malbec, please read on for some top suggestions.

Malbec was originally grown in the South of France, although it was traditionally blended with other grapes to produce red Bordeaux – or Claret – as we Brits know it. It needs a great deal of sunshine to fully ripen, and a big differential between night and day time temperatures, so most wine producing regions of Argentina are very well suited, as they’re virtually all at altitude and all sheltered from rainfall by the Andes, giving many regions a glorious 320 days a year of sunshine – about the same as we get in the UK in 10 years!  France on the other hand always struggled with the climate and concentrated on different grapes requiring less sunshine to ripen.

Argentina has made enormous progress and is now producing world class red blends, especially Bordeaux based blends, some excellent red varietals including a few suprises like excellent Sangiovese! And some very good white varietals – especially Torrontes – plus some great sparkling wines and dessert wines too. So you’d think you couldn’t really go wrong ordering something Argentinian on a wine list? Well, unfortunately as with other major wine producing countries,  there are plenty of unscrupulous companies taking advantage of Argentina’s success, to produce inferior wines and sell them on the back of the recent good publicity. But don’t despair, get some good advice and you’ll be drinking some of the best red wines around, for a fraction of the price of anything French any where near the same quality.

One of the best and most popular mid priced Malbecs around at present is Susana Balbo Malbec, from her new venture Dominio del Plata in Mendoza. However, if you want something really impressive for less money, try Eral Bravo Malbec, the brand name of a new boutique winery in Mendoza set up by the Sanchez Nieto family who’ve been making exceptional wines in Argentina for 30 years. It’s still relatively unheard of over here but their wines are fabulous. If you want to spend a little more and experience one of the very best Malbecs around, try NQN Malma Colleccion Malbec from Patagonia – another boutique winery producing exceptional wines. They make a lot of good wines in small quantities and their standard Malbec is very good, their Riserva is even better, but this - their Colleccion - is something very special. Finally for the ultimate in indulgence, travel to the other end of Argentina, high up on the plains of Salta, and go for El Porvenir de Los Andes Laborum Malbec. This is a hand crafted wine made in tiny quantities, about 18000 bottles annually. They make superb varietals from other grapes too, including a stunning Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and a fabulous Tannat – another Argentine speciality. I defy anybody to try these four Malbecs and not be impressed. They’re all available from Argentine specialist and all round good wine specialist www.goodwineonline.co.uk

The internet is full of wine blogs, wine enthusiasts just like ourselves who like and enjoy wine as part of their everyday lives. However, with everything, there is a lot of misinformation and content put out by poor quality commercial wineries, pretending to be independent, peddling their wares. Who do you trust? Here are 3 blogs that share the same passion and knowledge as Wine Wire, and are well worth taking a look at.

1. Wine Conversation – http://www.wineconversation.com/

This wine blog was set up Robert McIntosh a wine blogger who began wine blogging in 2006. He works in the UK representing wineries from Rioja, although this is his job, the Wine Conversation blog has nothing to do with his work and the blog is set up for his own thoughts on wine. This wine blog focuses on different innovative ways on wine marketing from up to date wine communication, distribution and packaging. The wine conversation blog is unique as it expresses wine culture from the mind of the real wine appreciator.

We like this wine blog because it offers readers an inspiring and innovative education on wine & wine marketing. Also it seems to be ahead of other wine blogs in bringing up to date wine blogging marketing through different inventive mediums.

Blogs we like from the Wine Conversation

The future of wine writing
Interactive wine tasting

2. Jamie Goode’s wine blog – http://www.wineanorak.com/blog/index.htm

Jamie Goode is a wine journalist, a member of the circle of wine writers, book editor, and publisher for wineanorak.com, a leading wine website.

Jamie is very popular within the wine writing industry and has his own column within The Sunday Express. With his job come fantastic opportunities for travel and wine tasting. The reason we like Jamie Goode’s blog is because it is very personal to his life experiences. We enjoy reading what he has been up to and what he has seen that week. He reports back on some of the most beautiful places in the world, and he gets to visit fantastic vineyards, which we enjoy learning about.

Blogs we like from Jamie are

Cornwall: the Eden Project
The Beauty of the Douro

3. Confessions of a Wino – http://www.alastairbathgate.com/

This wine blog is by Alastair Bathgathe who describes himself as an amateur wine enthusiast (whose waistline also reveals a love of decent food). We like this wine blog because it is for everyone. Alastair shares his passions for different wines and foods for all types of wine enthusiasts. He writes his blog unpretentiously and it is easily followed by everyone from other wine bloggers to wine lovers to wine marketers, while also being informative. He also thinks about those of us out there who don’t have an extremely high budget for wine and dining out, but at the same time brings us good quality wines which we can afford to try.

Blogs we like from confessions of a wino are

Chateau de Francs 2005
Italian Freemasons nobble me in Manchester

Your Favourites?

These are 3 blogs we like at Wine Wire, but we are always open to reading new blogs or websites. Do let us know in the comments which are your favourites & why.

Coinciding with the release of the frankly awful Beaujolais Nouveau on November 18th, is the publication of renowned wine writer Michael Gluck’s new book ‘The Great Wine Swindle’ revealing the nefarious goings on in the international wine trade. I’ve been asked by the publishers to give it a pre-release review.

This book lifts the lid on the many cons, lies and cheats existing in the UK wine trade, from the supermarkets blatantly fraudulent ’half price deals’ to the traditional wine merchants’ stealth tactics of flogging inferior wine to punters or ‘Indian customers’ as they refer to the wealthy but naive amateur Bordeaux enthusiasts.

It also exposes the blatant illegal practises in the vineyard – in Bordeaux and Burgundy in particular, where different wines from other regions are routinely imported and blended into existing wine, against all the AOC regulations. The French even admit the AOC regulations are a waste of time and no guarantee of a wine’s content or geographical origin. But so long as the British punter will pay for the name on the bottle……..

The book is full of interesting facts on the corruption and lies that riddle the international wine trade from the very top – government level, right down to the charlatans that peddle big brands in the high street, and of course the supermarkets who are single handedly responsible for murdering the availability of decent quality wine in the UK. (If you want good wine go to the wonderfully independent www.goodwineonline.co.uk who are championing the cause!) I’m delighted to find someone else who shares my views on the UK wine trade, I was beginning to think I was going mad. Was it only me who could see all this frankly crap wine peddled as ‘the norm’? Are we supposed to believe that other people in other countries actually drink the same dross that they try and force on us? Wine drinkers in other countries simply wouldn’t stand for it.  Malcolm quotes in the book from a senior employee at Bibendum, saying the UK has become the toilet of the world wine trade, flooded with the lowest quality wine anywhere. But don’t despair, there are one or two independents left in the UK who pride themselves on offering only good wine. If you like wine and you want choice, quality and value please drop the supermarkets and start buying your wine from a quality independent wine merchant. It doesn’t have to cost more money, but you will get much better wine!

It’s a fascinating read which will open the eyes of UK wine lovers and hopefully prevent them from being ripped off and duped into spending their hard earned money on inferior wine with a posh label. It’s only £8.99 from Amazon so it’s a good investment for yourself, or an ideal Christmas gift for a wine enthusiast. It exposes all the lies and cons, the pomp and ceremony that has given wine drinking a middle class image in the UK. With suitable exposure this book could shake up things in the UK wine world, which is no bad thing.

Times are tough, money is tight. Nobody actually wants a recession. However when businesses and retailers are feeling the pinch there are always some bargains to be had. We’ve seen discounts of 75% common place over the last 12 months – mainly on items that are hugely over inflated in the first place like kitchens and sofas, but it means you can get a good deal at last. The Bank of England base rate is at an all time low of 0.5% and VAT has been temporarily cut to 15%, all to try and get the nation spending again.

So most items are cheaper now than they’ve been for quite some time – but not wine! Why not? Well, let’s start with 36 pence duty increase over the last 18 months – with VAT chargable on this increase. But that’s just on still wine under 15%abv. Anything fizzy has been hammered even harder, and any higher alcohol wines like Amarone are subject to higher duty rates! Let’s not forget the Houses of Parliament have the only bars in the UK that are exempt from VAT, and they have a wonderful wine cellar of all the best wines funded by us the taxpayer!

But that’s only a part of the problem. The other reason wine prices have shot up is the pound has lost 25% of it’s value over major foreign currencies. Today it was right down to 1.06 Euro, and fears are that it will reach 1:1 very shortly. This would be absolute disaster for the UK wine trade. 18 months ago the pound traded at 1.40 Euros.

Put this into perspective!

If a wine cost a UK importer 4 Euros 18 months ago, it translated to £2.85 plus £1.24 duty, plus 72p VAT which was £4.81 per bottle – the importer and retailer then have to add their margin.

Today (or very shortly) that 4 Euros would be £4, plus £1.60 duty, plus 84p VAT which is £6.44, an icrease of 34%. With transport and the importer and retailer margins – with VAT added – that  wine would retail at £9.99 probably more in a traditional wine shop.

So we know why prices have increased.

What should I do to keep the cost of my wine down?

Well, there’s still time to make some canny savings but it’s difficult to commit to spending when all your instincts are telling you to save. But more price increases are on their way so if you buy now you will save money. The pound is likely to continue to weaken at least till a general election when we can have a change of government and start rebuilding the economy. But that will not be an overnight recovery so the pound is likely to stay weak for a couple of years. However the wine trade works 4 months behind the pound! Importers will have agreed a price on the wine they’ve imported and no doubt have a Euro bank account to pay for it. It’s their next shipment of wine that’s likely to cost them an extra 10% which will be 20% by the time it filters down to the consumer. So leap in now and buy if you can spare the money! Remember this government is planning on increasing VAT in January – they say back to 17.5% but I can’t see that personally. The whole exercise of reducing VAT to 15% cost Uk business more than it saved – they were already discounting 75%, so what real difference is an extra 2.5% going to make? No, I beleive this was a smokescreen so the Government can raise VAT to 18.5% or even 20% knowing how brassic they are! This will also put the price of your wine up!

My advice is buy now – because prices WILL increase!

Is good wine bottles of First Growth Bordeaux at £1000 per bottle? Or is it a wine you can really enjoy that costs £10? Or there again is it a top class Argentine red for £30 which blows the French away on quality, let alone the price/quality ratio?

There are plenty of refined gentlemen sitting on their chesterfields, wearing a blazer and peering over their spectacles who’d tell you that good wine IS French. They’ll happily pay £40 for a bottle of Puligny Montrachet – which in fact tastes something like sucking a battery - from their wine merchant, who incidentally is also middle aged and also wears a green tweed smoking jacket. They’ll also buy expensive red Burgundy, severely lacking in fruit and severely overpriced, but be quite content because this is the wine their peers drink. Thirty years ago these were the leading wines that everyone aspired to drinking. But times change and nowhere quite so quickly as in the wine world.

Thirty years ago these people all aspired to drive a Jaguar XJS or a Mercedes 280, but would you want one now? Mechanical windows, poor economy, AM radio and the same performance you can now get from a 1.9 turbodeisel? These cars were great in their day but things have certainly moved on.

The same is true in the wine world. New world countries like Argentina and South Africa are producing some of the best wines in the world. In fact there’s now great wine coming out of virtually every wine producing country thanks to developments in technology and the sharing of information.

Over the last decade French wine sales have taken a pasting as more and more people are discovering that they can get way better quality for far less money by expanding their horizons and trying these new wines. Typically some French producers in Bordeaux and Burgundy have been in cahoots with British wine importers keeping the price of their wines artificially high. Some of these British wine merchants continue to attempt this today by playing on the old school traditions and maintaining the stuffy image and snobbery traditionally associated with fine wines, to charge a hefty premium.

The irony of all this? It’s the same upper middle class, middle aged gentlemen sitting on their chesterfields who are being overcharged. Those who will steadfastly defend the very same French wine producers who have annual meetings each vintage  to discuss what price the UK market will bear! Yes, that is how the price of fine Bordeaux is actually set! It has nothing to do with the quality of the wine, it’s based purely on the economic situation in the UK and how many punters there are out there.

Personally I wouldn’t buy any of these wines on principal. But now there’s an even better reason not to buy them – quite simply there’s far better wine from new world countries readily available at far cheaper prices. And today you no longer need a face to face interaction with a gentleman in a tweed blazer, you can simply buy it online and have your wine merchant deliver it to you for a change. Yes, times have certainly changed – and definitely for the better!

Personally I don’t follow fashion or trends but I consider myself  ‘normal’. I’m sat at my desk this morning with the door open, wearing a fleece top for warmth – which happens to be embroidered with ‘Italy v Wales 2001′. Is it really that long since I bought any new clothes? Now I come to think of it, I’ve only been into a clothes shop twice in the last ten years! But I know what I like, and that’s all I buy. I’m not controlled by advertisers with glossy magazine and TV ads, trying to part me from my money. I’ve never watched ‘Strictly Dancing’ or the ‘X Factor’. I really am out of fashion.

However, these people who tell us how to live our lives are partly responsible for one of the biggest sins of the 21st century – ‘Anything but Chardonnay’ – they’ve made Chardonnay unfashionable. Of course it’s only the feeble minded who let themselves be controlled by the media, but this still has a serious affect on wine sales in restaurants, hotels and bars, which filters back up the chain all the way to the producers. 

Wine and fashion should not mix! Fashion is all about getting weak people to part with their money. I’ve watched teenage lads wearing woolly hats in 25 degrees this summer, with baggy jeans hanging around their knees – at least that might keep them cool. All the teenage girls look like they’re auditioning for the next Star Wars film, with knee length furry boots, baggy white tops and a 10″ wide belt made from roofing felt, tucked underneath the boobs which serves no apparent purpose whatsoever. Would you take advice on which wines to drink from the people responsible for this?

I suppose the probem began when celebrities began naming their children after grapes. There are over 1000 different grape varieties so what’s the odds of picking Chardonnay first? What’s next? Verdelho? Gewurztraminer? Probably ‘Albarino’  as it’s the latest fashionable grape along with ‘Gruner Veltliner’ but that’s hardly a name for a pretty girl!

The downside of all this of course is that it’s had a negative effect on Chardonnay sales. We have some ‘fashion conscious’ friends who will simply refuse to order Chardonnay if we’re out for a meal, although they love Chablis! Personally I love a good Chardonnay, it makes some of the best white wines in the world. A lot of people are missing out on the joys of a good wine because they listen to the media. Pinot Grigio has benefitted of course, as it’s star has risen as Chardonnay’s has fallen. Our friends will automatically order the first Pinot Grigio they see on a menu, and this can be a big mistake. Chardonnay is generally a rich, full wine, often buttery with some oak. Pinot Grigio can be delicious if you find a good one, (such as Santa Margharita) but there’s a vast amount of inferior Pinot flooding the market, weak and insipid, and often not from Italy despite having an Italian name! Watch out for names like ‘Don Luigi Pinot Grigio’ and such like – closer inspection is likely to reveal that it actually comes from somewhere such as Hungary or Croatia, and very often it doesn’t even contain any Pinot Grigio, just cheaper grapes!

For those of us who may have strayed from the path and forgotten just how nice a good Chardonnay can be, here are a couple of recommendations. Try these wines - Morton Estates White Label Chardonnay & R H Philips Toasted Head Chardonnay, and I’d like to bet you’ll be proud to fly in the face of fashion and choose your wines for the right reasons – taste, quality and value. And let the crowd with the woolly hat and baggy jeans happily fritter away their hard earned cash on over priced Eastern European Garganega!