TOM UTLEY: Yet like so many others, I feel we can't serve the cheapest stuff on those rare occasions when we have guests who aren't family. But is this really because we hope to impress?
First, a confession. Half a century of chain-smoking has so dulled my palate that I'd be pushed to tell the difference between a Bulgarian plonk from a discount store, at £4.50 a bottle, and a £3,000 Premier Grand Cru Classé from the finest vineyard in Bordeaux.
In that moment in 1971, I realised this wasn't merely showy-off pseudery, as I'd suspected until then. The likes of old grandpa were on to something worth exploring further. After his death, my grandmother told me she'd intended to hand this treasure-trove down to my brother and me. But when she discovered that we were both smokers, she changed her mind.
I still feel a lingering sense, however, that my ignorance of wine, and my inability to distinguish between perfection and plonk, is something I should be mildly ashamed of, akin to a failure to appreciate the genius of Shakespeare, Rembrandt or Mozart. I suppose he imagined I had access to a generous expense account. He was wrong. Enough to say that I practically fainted at his choice, and my poor children almost starved until pay-day at the end of the month.
A survey of 2,000 wine drinkers, commissioned by Lidl GB and published this week, finds that while we typically spend £9 on a bottle for ourselves, we splash out £12.50 when we're entertaining. According to the reports I've read, we do this in the hope of impressing. But I wonder if that's the whole truth.
I prefer to think it's because we want to give our friends as much pleasure as we can afford. After all, the fact that people like me can't taste the difference between the bargain-basement offers and the bottles with the security tags round their necks doesn't mean that our guests can't, either. To my horror, however, my friend was distracted by another guest as I handed the bottle over, and he didn't so much as glance at the label before he put it with a dozen or so others, perhaps destined for the mulled wine.
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