Sainsbury's summer offerings

I dutifully toured the tables when UK supermarket Sainsbury's recently showed dozens and dozens of the wines the team are most proud of. At the end I was struck by how relatively few non-European wines they had chosen. Admittedly they had Loire specialist Charles Sydney on hand, and some of their best wines were from the Loire. They reminded me, for example, just how good some 2009 Sancerres are, even if the quantity was much reduced.

I looked at a good selection of the wines in their new range of House wines, all under £4. A slightly sweet Chianti was...