This was one of my bulk party blind buying bottles. It was reviewed very well by Anthony Rose and Jane MacQuitty, and has a best Merlot trophy, so I was expecting great things for just £4.99 a bottle.

So to the packaging. Ugly to say the least. Looks like the label has been spray painted on. Not dressed to impress. Still surely the contents would recover the situation...

No. Not at all. Imagine eating a rotten plum buried in earth with your hands tied behind your back. That is the most accurate description of the wine I could come up with. Simply disgusting.

A real shame as I am now left with 5 bottles of the stuff, which I do not have the heart to palm off onto friends. I know that taste is very subjective, but the above two wine critics complementing the bottle feels about as convincing as someone recommending eating dog food as a replacement for pate.

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This wine was a gift. It is from Sicily with Cerasuolo di Vittoria having the advantage of being DOCG. Italian DOC wines are the loose equivalent of the French AOC system which basically guarantees quality. The additional ‘G’ means that the wine has been tasted by a government committee and then sealed with a magic number for authenticity. It is already sounding like a good present.

The tasting notes from Planeta state -

‘To drink at once or keep for 4-5 years, following its evolution’

So looks like I got to it just in time. Who knows what creature it may have ‘evolved’ into next year.

The grape blend is 60% Nero d’Avola (a big rich grape) and 40% Frappato (lighter bodied), both very typical Sicilian varieties. The strength is 13% ABV which is not too much of a headache recipe for the next morning.

The bottle is pretty unremarkable to look at. Easily passed by and not at all sophisticated or glamorous. The potential for understated brilliance. Almost shabby chic.

I cut through the thick foil, a long pull of satisfying cork and poured myself a generous glass to accompany a chicken couscous thing I threw together.

The wine was full of life, dry yet fruity, and layered with all sorts of aromas, keeping my subconscious guessing. Really delicious. If you swill it around your mouth then your tongue has that dry tannic feeling, but only for a moment, as the richness of the wine punches through. A really good balance.

I will be searching out more wines from Planeta.

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One of my occasional lunchtime treats is a visit to my local noodle bar. A meal for those days when carbs and fat are craved by the body, nothing else will do. Someone should make trans fats taste as bad to your middle class margarine eater as methylated spirit to a broke alcoholic. Then I would only have the MSG to worry about.

I battled through with the chop sticks but gave in and used the spoon provided towards the end. Immediately all the taste, enjoyment and authentic feeling of the dish evaporated. I felt both conspicuous and unsatisfied with my resolve. I was no longer worthy of eating Chinese food. Fair enough that the only Mandarin I know is a small orange, but to have not mastered chop sticks by tender age of 40 seemed inexcusable.

I was like a duck out of Hoisin sauce.

The most striking thing was the perceived change in flavour of the dish as soon as I opted for the spoon. It was really odd, the spell had been broken, the dish became very ordinary.

This is simply why, in my opinion it is important to drink wine from a glass. The more we dress it up, the more likely we are to enjoy it. Take away familiarity, throw in some awkwardness and you may like the wine less. Respect the drink and it will do its best to respect your palate.

Sounds like rubbish, after all you taste what you taste...right?

No so. Studies have revealed that taste is affected by packaging and a whole host of other feel good factors. This has recently been taken a bit further. The American Association of Wine Economists has discovered that wine novices can accurately assess the value of a bottle just by looking at the label.

No need for bottle prices I hear you shout. Just get the check out person to ask you what you think. One less infuriating beep to worry about. Back to the real world where we have to 'lock our doors', they already need a cordon of scrutinising armed staff around self-checkout queues so I very much doubt a new wacky concept like price estimation will catch on.

What this study does tell us, combined with information from other research, is that if wine looks expensive it will be enjoyed more.

In that case I am going to design some very classy labels and rebrand my plonk to serve to my future guests. Let's see if they salivate over rubbish. Is that mean?....Yes probably, but after all isn’t that what goes on in a considerable portion of the wine industry?

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I have just returned from a break in Valencia, Spain, staying in the wonderful Caserio del Mirador in the hills near Jalon. Driving up into the mountains to my accommodation, dreaming about all the wonderful paella to come, I noticed that there were lots of vineyards amongst the stepped olive groves.

Let face it, vineyards are pretty uninteresting to look at. Just lots of small stumpy bush like protrusions with large floaty green leaves. It does not help that in the summer they are planted 'en vaso' (low bushes) due to the heat, giving them an awkward stunted look. From a distance they add a sort of order and beauty to a hill side I suppose, as much as a golf course transforms wasteland. In reality all you really want to do is play the game or indeed drink the wine. A great big vista of a carrot, teasing you.

So it's is all very well taking in the viticultural views, but where could I buy the local juice?

Luckily you do not have far to look. Jalon itself is crammed with bodegas where you can drop in and pour yourself wine at around one euro per litre straight from the barrel. Fantastic. I drank plenty of the local stuff in this way and it was great. This is where plastic bottles and wine are a perfect partnership. Just pop into and fill them up.

I would not be surprised if instead of a milkman there was a 'wineman' who delivers fresh wine to the local inhabitants every day, so ubiquitous is the stuff.

The red is very thick and strong due to the hot summers (high sugar content) and grape varieties (I think mainly Monastrell and Garnacha).The white I tried was Moscatel, sweet and delicious, a very famous pudding wine from the area. This was all interspersed with the odd fino sherry, again from the bodega barrel.

This part of Valencia (Jalon) is away from Benidorm and Alicante on the coast (Costa Blanca). It is very rural and fairly bereft of mass market tourism. This is not to be confused with Valencia the city which is the third largest in Spain and the capital of the Valencia region. Spain is in fact divided up into 17 autonomous states, the 'Comunitat Valenciana' being one. The Valencian Community is then divided up into three provinces of Alicante,Castellón and Valencia, and within that 34 counties.

But how does the regions wine map look overlayed?

Most people just think of Rioja when it comes to Spain, mass marketed to us in most supermarket Spanish wine sections. Let's remove the commercial blinkers...

Now we are getting into opening Russian dolls..

Within the Valencian Community there are four DO's ( Denominación de Origen) which are the classification boundaries.

Alicante, Utiel-Requena,Cava and Valencia

Valencia DO has further sub zones (Alto Turia, Valentino, Moscatel de Valencia, Clariano) as does Alicante (Alicante, La Marina)

I was staying near Jalon in the Alicante DO where the principal white grape is Moscatel (aka Muscat) and red Monastrell (aka Mourvèdre)

If this gargantuan geographic gobbledegook was not confusing enough there are the languages to contend with. Two in fact, Valencian (Catalan) and Spanish. Still my schoolboy Spanish and wild sign language was sort of adequate to get me by.

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As promised here is a review of one of the bottles I purchased as part of a bulk blind buying exercise for a party. The bottle itself is from Corbieres, an appellation in the Languedoc-Rousillon area in South France. It has a serious looking label and a glaring gold medal stuck on the neck so you are in no doubt that it has an award for something. At £4.99 from Majestic it seemed like a bargain.

It was in fact awarded gold in the Decanter Wine Awards in 2009. So in my opinion was all of this very public praise spot on, or lacking?

Wine descriptions can be pretty odd, confused and off-putting whilst trying to portray the opposite, and this is a case in point -

Decanter says - "(Gold Medal) A wine with real punch and personality. Cherries, pepper, black olive, coffee, elegant minerality, with pleasingly rustic tannins and attractive length"

The Wine Gang says - "floral lift....and lots of zest and crunch"

Victoria Moore says - "reeks of dried fig"

Will Lyons says - "cented notes of dried fruits, dates and a whiff of eucalyptus and tree resin"

The combination of floral, zest, crunch, tree resin, dried fruits, fig, eucalyptus, cherries, pepper, black olive and coffee makes me want to run a mile. Put that in a blender and drink it.....

I know these aromas are designed to subtly describe wine, but together they appear to show that taste is entirely subjective and hard to meaningfully describe. Talk about covering all bases.

I cut the metal foil, pulled the firm real cork and poured a glass to accompany some reheated quiche, for a lack of anything more inspirational in the fridge. It looked resolute, but not too thick/inky in the glass, and had quaffable written all over it at only 13%. I took more of a gulp than a sip. I filled my mouth with a spicy, yet light wine that found its way into my belly without questioning my senses with the roughness you may expect from this cheaper offering. Before I knew it the glass was empty. So I refilled, almost swigging it.

This wine is a good everyday quaff, and has the ability to somehow refresh you, like a glass of rose on a hot summer's day. It dances between medium and light bodied, effortless delivering, without knocking you out with heavy alcohol content.

I don't think it deserves a gold medal, as the wine is lacking in memorable character. Very safe hands, reliable, nice, but perhaps just a tad dull. Almost too easy drinking, but if pushed and I was in the business of rating wines more formally I would certainly award it silver as it deserves any praise it gets at that price point.

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