While France's first lady was seducing the audience of Later with Jools Holland, the country itself was coming to terms with the fact that this year's wine crop will be overtaken by Italy by some 500 million bottles. However, at least one French commentator had the nous to point out that its exports were still nearly double those of Italy. Anyway, he went on, "we are responding to the needs of a market that wants to drink less but better". He would say that, but over the past few years, competition from the New World has put a much-needed boot into the Gallic derrière.

News reports trailed Channel4's recent Dispatches programme on the wine industry as "disturbing". According to the TV show, many low-end wines have oak chips added to create the impression that they have been fermented in a traditional barrel; and producers use a host of additives to disguise the flavour of inferior grapes without listing them on the labels. One ex-newspaper wine writer even claimed that "many wines are no better than a sort of alcoholic cola.

I don't remember exactly when The Bunch was formed but I seem to recall thinking that the first press tasting was merely a pretext for a rogue's drinking club. Each of the rogues in question, Simon Loftus of Adnams, Graham Chidgey of Laytons, Adam Brett-Smith of Corney & Barrow and John Armit of Armit and Robin Yapp of Yapp Bros, was in his own way a pioneer of sorts.

According to the news pages, you never need to pay any more than £6.99 for a bottle of wine, because above that figure it's all down to personal preference. One report latched on to Decanter Magazine's press release following this month's World Wine Award dinner which extolled the virtues of "a decent bottle" for £6.99, and managed to come up with the suitably crowdpleasing headline: "Why £6.99 is the most you should pay for a bottle of wine". Robin Goldstein, an American wine critic, agrees.

Wine: Liquid assets

There's an old maxim in the wine trade that the best way to make a small fortune out of wine is to start with a larger one. Despite the occasional headline splash of untold riches made from fabulous rare bottles, like the 1811 Château d'Yquem which recently fetched £37,900, the mundane truth is that successful investing in wine requires a combination of caution, knowledge, experience and skill; and add a dose of luck for good measure.

Monday was a day for tears and tiaras at the Hempel Hotel as, on behalf of Decanter Magazine's Retailer Awards Panel, I introduced the prizes for the crème de le crème of the UK trade in an environment that was as cool as an English summer. It's been an annus horribilis for wine-selling with duty up 14p a bottle in March against a background of rising prices to the retailer, a horrendously expensive euro and a high-street haemorrhaging in the face of the belt-tightening credit crunch.

Whether you love it for convenience and value, or hate it for decimating a nation of shopkeepers, you can't ignore Tesco. For anyone who can recall Green Shield stamps and "pile it high sell it cheap"mentality of the Jack Cohen era, it seems improbable that Tesco can have quite so dramatically transcended its humble origins to become not only the nation's leading grocer, but its foremost wine retailer, too. Last year I mentioned that the experienced and affable Dan Jago had been hired to take the beers, wines and spirits department to a new level of quality.

Feeling like a grape today, or the product of the grape at least? If you were a grape, what kind do you think you’d be, Charmaine Chardonnay, Girty Gewürz, Micky Merlot or a tongue-tied and confused Cserszegi Fuszeres? Every grape has its own distinct identity, and it’s that ‘varietal’ persona that helps us to work out the flavour and style of the wine it’s made from. Like their human counterparts, some grapes are stars, others boring, some have stronger aromas and characters than others and some interact better with the environment in which they’re brought up.

Last time I brought up the subject of South African wine, I promised to follow up with the results of the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show I was involved in in May and an update of the source of the problem flavours found in some Cape reds.

Just because you're not intending to scale K2, drive a Maserati Quattroporte or conduct the LSO any time soon doesn't mean you're not interested in mountaineering, fast cars or classical music. By the same token, argues Neil Beckett, the editor of 1001 Wines You Must Try Before You Die (Cassell, £20), knowing more about the loftier peaks of wine doesn't mean it's compulsory to drink legendary vintages of Yquem, Lafite or Cristal and bankrupt yourself in the process.