On the grapevine

Weighty problem: Aldi has discovered that “Brits judge a wine by how much it costs, how heavy the bottle is and what the label looks like”. Apparently, most people cannot tell a £6 bottle from a £36 bottle. This is probably why Aldi’s new wines are packaged in bottles that weigh almost 800g, while some better wines from other retailers are in bottles that are half that weight.

Even if those bottles are recycled, trucking them around will still cause much more pollution than lighter bottles.

From now on, if I find a wine packaged in a bottle that seems to be unnecessarily heavy, I will point it out. Sometimes when

I taste a wine, I do not have scales to weigh bottles, so I will undoubtedly miss some. If you find your wine is packaged in an over-heavy bottle, then please weigh it and let me know.

As for some people not knowing the difference in taste between a £6 wine and a £36 wine, Aldi certainly didn’t ask the readers of this column.

Duty ups and downs: While it is good news that the Chancellor has frozen the proposed increases in duty for wine, there is a new range of duties that will be levied in February 2023. It will be good news for sparkling wines, in particular English sparkling wines which will become slightly less expensive, but the link of duty to alcohol content will affect fortified wines and even some table wines from Australia and Argentina where alcohol levels can reach 15 per cent. Meanwhile there is no harm in stocking up. Prices generally don’t come down in real terms.

110 not out: Eileen Ash celebrated her 110th birthday last week and she puts her longevity down to a regular glass of red wine. She is a remarkable lady having worked as a spy for MI6 during the war and played international cricket for England. Her twice weekly yoga sessions may also have had an effect on her lifespan, but it seems that red wine may not have been too bad for her health either.