‘When I go to buy a chicken I like to have three to choose from. When I go to buy wine, I’m now presented with 300. It’s completely bewildering’. I struggled to believe my ears listening to the excellent Radio 4 Food Programme on the three major London wine fairs in late May. Was the blogger interviewed at the London International Wine Fair (LIWF) really complaining about ‘the sheer profusion of wines available from so many different countries and grape varieties and different takes on winemaking’?

It would be easy to knock Tesco’s new raft of lower alcohol wines given that few wine lovers would be likely to enjoy these saccharine zero to five per cent confections. You have to wonder whether ‘encouraging customers to be mindful of the amount of alcohol they consume’ plays second fiddle to the commercial imperative that ‘lower alcohol wines have seen positive sales growth over the past year’. According to the research company Wine Intelligence, lower alcohol sales will increase to six to eight per cent of the wine market.