Increasingly, red wine is a stand-alone drink, consumed without food. And sometimes that is a bit unfair, as many red wines are made to accompany a meal, being too tannic and structured to make comfortable drinking on their own, for this reason alone being overlooked. In these days of instant gratification wine drinkers appear to want each and every red wine to be all things to all men i.e. sufficiently versatile for consumption at a) a wedding breakfast, b) a rugby club dance, c) watching a test match on the telly, d)…well, you get the picture. Here’s the thing: red wine that will perfectly accompany your plated lump of the expired animal of your choice will probably not be the same wine to drink whilst sitting in a deckchair staring at the clouds and pondering whether Nietzsche simply got out of bed on the wrong side at birth.

What is sure is that red wine is good for you. The skin of grapes contains resveratrol and it is believed that this phytoalexin is capable of lowering blood sugar, preventing cancer and generally doing good things to one’s cardiovascular system. Apparently, this has yet to be proved, but I say “Do I really care?” I don’t actually need scientists to tell me that red wine is good for me!