I don’t know how many of you buy wine specifically to drink with food, but the Italians do and we could learn a few lessons from them. If you taste wines such as soave and pinot grigio on their own, you might think they’re a bit bland and boring, but sip a glass with a plate of antipasti or spaghetti carbonara, say, and they spring into life.

Italians by and large don’t want wines with overt fruit flavours, too much oak or overly high levels of alcohol, because they overwhelm their fundamentally simple food, which tends to respect both the raw ingredient and the season in which you’re serving it.