Drink to me only…

… with fizzy wine, says Jonathan Ray. Blow out on bubbles for St Valentine’s Day and, whether consumed neat or entwined in a cocktail, they’ll give your love life a lift

I’M usually excused from Valentine’s Day duties, having had the foresight to get married on 11 February all those years ago. Mrs Ray turns a blind eye to what she – rather unfortunately – terms the VD celebrations, on the strict understanding that I make the most enormous fuss of her on our anniversary.

I do my best, but I’ve been on the back foot ever since the wedding itself and a honeymoon spent in North Wales rather than in the Maldives or Caribbean, thanks to my being acutely short of do-re-mi.

A remote converted chapel on the side of a mountain in Snowdonia seemed a romantic concept at the planning stage.

The reality was somewhat different, what with the lack of electricity, the snow drifts, the frozen pipes and the need to ablute in an icy stream and to do our various necessities behind pricklesome bushes stared at by baffled but curious sheep.

Although cash poor, I was wine rich – thanks to my job at Berry Bros & Rudd – and my new missus and I drank ourselves stupid on some magnificent bottles. It’s a tradition we continue to this day and if you can’t get blotto on St V’s Day or your anniversary, when can you?

Bubbles are key, of course. If you don’t ply your beloved with fine bubbles then I’m afraid there’s no hope. If you want to fling woo, fling fizz – and if you’re thinking fizzy cocktails, think prosecco.

The reason I ended up halfway up a Welsh mountain that February was because I’d got engaged in Venice after a Bellini-fuelled rush of blood to the head in Harry’s Bar. It’s amazing what one can achieve with just a couple of fizzy drinks and dash of silvery moonlight.

As you know, a Bellini is prosecco topped up with peach juice (and a dash of peach schnapps, if you’re serious). A Jo-jo is the strawberry version. I always use Funkin’s excellent fruit purées, of which there is a wonderful, widely available range, and I only ever use prosecco as it’s light, fresh and lively. Champagne is too heavy and full-on for such drinks although perfect, of course, in a Buck’s Fizz or pukka champagne cocktail.

Prosecco – really good prosecco – is also delicious on its own and a useful tool on St Valentine’s Day. As Sandro Bottega – producer of the eponymous brand, one of my favourites – once told me: “We Italians adore pretty girls and we find that prosecco, which we also adore, is the most useful of methods in getting to know them.” You can’t argue with a master.

Pink sparklers always go down a storm on 14 February and with English examples being so darn delicious these days, do consider them. The 2015 Ambriel Rosé from Pulborough, West Sussex, made in the traditional method from 100% Pinot Noir, is a stunner, as is the 2018 Herbert

Hall Brut Rosé from Marden, Kent, made from all three champagne varieties. If you don’t seal the deal over a bottle of either of these, I don’t think you’re really trying.

Sometimes, depending on whom you have designs on, only champagne will do. Of my current favourites, I heartily recommend the newly-launched and utterly delectable Brimoncourt Brut Régence and Lanson’s Le Black Réserve Brut NV, a deliciously sophisticated and moreish step up from Lanson’s regular black label, drawn from the finest crus and aged for five years. Both these will do the trick.

As for still wines, you can’t go wrong with some soft, smooth, Pinot Noir. The best examples are gentle on the palate with little in the way of tannins and are full of dark hedgerow fruit and ripe cherries and are as good on their own as they are with food. Look for fine red burgundy or wines from the Western Cape, New Zealand’s Central Otago, Marlborough or Martinborough or from California and Oregon. If you’re on a budget, try Chile and brands such as Cono Sur Bicicleta, widely available, daftly drinkable and little more than £6 a pop.

If you’re bored with Pinot, try a fine Amarone from Italy, made from semidried grapes and similarly seductive. My current favourite is the 2016 Masi Costasera Amarone Classico: rich, ripe, elegant, incredibly smooth, easy-going and just that little bit earthy. I thought it would be right up Mrs Ray’s street and I was bang on.

“Oooh, gosh, a George Clooney of a wine,” she said with a sigh, her eyes going all shiny. Ouch.

If you don’t seal the deal over a bottle of either of these, I don’t think you are trying