Asda Extra Special

One of the perils of writing about any subject is losing touch. Wine writing seems especially susceptible to being irrelevant, with its internal trade culture (and I mean this affectionately) of geeks’n’cliques. How often, for example, do writers taste any of the top ten UK wine brands? How often do we actually buy wine, as so many do, with our weekly shop in the supermarket, choosing by promotional discount or advertising?

On the other hand, writers have unrivalled access to a huge diversity of styles, tasting and analysing daily from a never-ending range, building up a detailed understanding of the...