A 2010 Bordeaux at £5? An Aussie Cabernet at £5.95? Surely a price-gun error, or maybe a temporary discount? Asda assures me that this is the permanent price. Only one obvious conclusion then – it must be ropey wine.

Wine one is Roc-Montalon Bordeaux Supérieur 2010. Smells a bit chemically and the taste lacks complexity. There is evidence of leaves and a lack of fruit but still somehow it is not unpleasant. At least the price doesn’t leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Wine two is an Aussie Cabernet Sauvignon called “Langhorne Creek” from 2011. This smells of baked beans (well, it is a supermarket wine) and tastes just a little sharp, but nonetheless fruity and juicy, if just a tad Haribo.

But here’s the thing. It’s really important to serve wine properly and if you put either of these into a decent (large bowl) glass, and if you serve at the right temperature (put in the fridge for about 30 mins before serving), they both taste so much better. Good gluggable party wines that you could easily serve to friends without any embarrassment.

For the lamb chops, and probably in other circumstances, the extra 98 pence to buy the Langhorne Creek is worth the stretch.

In these hard economic times, it is good to have somewhere to go to find wines that are drinkable and cheap. And both of these bottles fit the bill. A demonstration, I guess, of Walmart buying power.

This Vinsobres comes from the Southern Rhone, is inky in colour and robust, spicy, tannic and plummy in taste. It’s a George Galloway of a wine. Feisty, intelligent, slightly unbalanced and available for purchase. Which you can do at Berry Bros. and Rudd for £14.95. At this price it’s a steal, but, unless you like wines that go with a blue steak, or that make you feel like you are doing a Vito Corleone impression with wet tea bags in your cheeks, I would recommend holding on for a few more years or so before drinking.

Very subtle for a 14% ABV wine, rich yet refined with tawny autumn fruits and spicy tomato. Goes just great with a rich meaty steak like ribeye and sirloin.

Another good Yorkshire experience occurred last Sunday at The Three Acres in Shelley. I ordered a bottle of Jaboulet-Aîné Hermitage La Chapelle, 2001, a legend of a wine – rich and fruity flavours of nutmeg, cinnamon, apple and hints of Indian and Chinese spices – intoxicating but never overpowering, it is a wine that makes you go oooh – but I digress. This is supposed to be about temperature. Oh, I should add that the price was £107.95, which maybe sounds a lot, but compared to an average retail price in the UK of about £75, is amongst the most reasonable of restaurant markups (another of my bugbears) I have ever seen. Compared to central London restaurants, where 200% and upwards is added, it is great to see wine prices inflated by less than 50% out here in the provinces.

The 3 Acres is a venerable Yorkshire gastro-pub and exactly the sort of place where posh but wine-ignorant guffawing is heard in every nook and cranny, whilst the car park looks like a Range Rover dealership. On a previous visit, I had asked for my red wine to be chilled and got a look of which Paddington Bear, on news of the prohibition of marmalade, would have been proud. This time the conversation was a little uncertain at first, but it turns out that The Three Acres had been storing this rather special wine for “quite a while” in carefully controlled conditions and decanted it at about 15 degrees. Perfect, and made it worth the huge bill (it was a celebration after all).

So a mega WART award to The Three Acres. The gong is in the post.

Oh, probably worth mentioning that the atmosphere is very cosy and the food served for Sunday lunch was superb too. Here’s some Yorkshire Bully. Might as well spend all your BFH, though, as no buses run through these remote parts. Not on a Sunday, anyway.

The 3 Acres Inn & Restaurant
Roydhouse, Shelley
Nr Huddersfield
West Yorkshire
HD8 8LR
W: www.3acres.com
E : info@3acres.com
T : +44 (0) 1484 602606
F : +44 (0) 1484 608411

The other essential component is a bottle of Tuella, Douro, 2006 vintage if you can get it, which should be opened and placed in the fridge. Then put a pan on the hob.

Find a can opener (yes, Branston do not provide a handy ring-pull) and pour the contents of the can into the pan. Turn up to a fairly high heat and stir regularly.

Place four slices of brown wholemeal, or preferably multi-grain bread into the toaster. Mine cooks best from frozen, so long as you remember to set the Frozen switch to On.

Reduce the beans for about 5 minutes, and then put the toast on. When it pops, butter two slices with real butter, cut in half and place on a plate. Spoon the beans, which by now should be a thick consistency with no runny liquid remaining, onto the toast and grind some black pepper to taste.

Butter the remaining slices, get a knife and fork and a napkin, or bib. Don’t tuck in just yet.

Retrieve the Tuella from the fridge (should have chilled for about 15-20 minutes by now), pour into a Riedel Vinum Bordeaux glass (the type you find in most posh restaurants) and enjoy.

The Tuella is a snip at £6.99 from Majestic. It must be one of the best Douros I have ever tasted at that price. A perfect balance of acidity, tannin, fruit and, since beans-on can be a bland dish, a decent wodge of spice.

It has been a long search for the best wine to match this venerable staple tea-time dish. Budget dining demands budget drinking and in that sense Tuella fits the bill too. If Tuella could check in at foursquare, it would be the Mayor of beans-on.

Luckily, I joined The Wine Society many moons ago and they ruthlessly and relentlessly ship me top quality wines at fair (not cheap) prices. Here is yet another reason to stay a member.

Beaujolais 2010 was supposed to be a mere shadow of the magnificent 2009 vintage. However, this Château Bonnet Chénas (£9.50) begs to differ. Much more serious than “typical” bubble gum Gamay, juicy and fruity but with a smidgen of spice. Think of it as a higher class of jelly (yes, streets ahead of Haribo).

Sorry for the lack of humour in this post. Say thanks to Tony Laithwaite and his band of Virgins for that.

But they say that you should buy Burgundy by producer, not by appellation or quality hierarchy. And few domaines come more highly recommended than Dujac. I can taste why. Strawberries and pepper. Nothing thin, bitter or even barnyardy in this wine and yet quite rich for a 13% ABV wine. A perfect match for the gentle flavours of fillet steak.

The trouble with decent Burgundy Pinot Noirs is twofold:

1. The wine can be variable

2. It is invariably expensive

But if you can afford to take a risk on a very occasional £40 bottle of bourgogne’s finest you will often be wowed. And Hanging Ditch will always do you a bulk discount if you buy a few bottles.

The rear of the label is all but unreadable, even with my reading glasses and a magnifying glass with a blowtorch as illumination. Fortunately, there is a factsheet on the web that reveals serious signs of marketing misdemeanour. Full of wine wank words, Yali, from wine conglomerate (wishitwas Cono Sur) Viña Ventisquero, tagline “A Step Beyond” displays a love of the “World” that draws suspicion of organic consumer manipulation. I have no idea what “Gran Reserva” means in relation to a Chilean Carménère (and the label and website disagree on the spelling of the grape). It smells fishier than one of the sturgeon no doubt farmed from any of the “Three Lagoons” on the label.

But I am not an investigative reporter. Merely a drinker, and I am prepared to take the Jonathon Porritt propaganda at face value, so it is not for me to pass judgement on wine ethics, merely whether it tastes good and represents VFM.

This wine is rich, opulent, smoky and spicy and smells of hot tarmacadam. I can taste beetroot, plums and cigars (unsmoked, and rolled on the inner thigh of a dusky maiden). I actually enjoyed it a lot and I think £9.99 is a very fair price for the pleasure. I think it should market itself on the quality of the wine rather than the vague references to tree hugging. I recommend drinking it with red meats.

Oh dear, it’s got me back into a good mood. Can anyone lend me a cat o’ nine tails?

Now, when it comes to tasting wine, there are so many variables that I am certain that two people can never taste the same wine in the same way, even side by side. It’s not just the terroir, the grapes, the winemaker, the storage conditions. What about the serving temperature, the glass it is served in, how long it has been opened, who you are drinking with, what you ate earlier? Indeed this experiment proved to me that even the length of time the wine has been in the glass makes a difference to the taste.

For the record, I preferred the Rheingau because it showed off the deep, earthy, waxy flavours of the Filhot – rum and raisin fudge with a hint of gooseberry. By contrast, the Sauvignon glass showed off more of the forward sweetness – toffee like with some lemon. Both very nice, but very different. Strange that, according to Riedel, the Rhiengau is designed largely for dry white wines.

Then I poured again and tasted more quickly. Subtly different again. The Sauvignon yielding more wax. The Rheingau still just had the edge though. Then I thought, hang on, this is daft! How can a glass make a difference if you swill the wine around your mouth anyway. So I passed the glasses to my teetotal wife who has a super-sensitive nose. She could clearly smell the difference. So I don’t believe it is where the wine lands on your tongue, it must be the way the wine sits and ‘matures’ in the glass. At least, that’s my theory for now.

So what have we really learnt? Every time I drink wine it will taste different – there are no real benchmarks, no real scores, just at a given point in time I will either like the wine, or love it, or I won’t. But those very variables that I am flippantly dismissing do make a big difference (temperature obviously the most significant for me – see  my WART campaign).

Pretty sure the Filhot came from Costco and was delish from either glass, although can’t remember exactly what I paid. Riedel glasses are probably available at Sainsbury’s these days or from online shopkeepists – normally at about £10-15 per glass.

Lusco is quite pungent for a wine of only 13% ABV.  Notes of Jif and Ajax Lemon hit the nostrils. It tastes cleaner than Toilet Duck but with more depth than a cistern block, and there is a fair amount of complexity, in a Finish 4in1 action kind of way.

Joking aside, it tastes a little citric, but otherwise is a very pleasant wine. I can imagine drinking numerous bottles over an outdoor octopus fuelled lunch in Vigo. But sorry, Mark, it hasn’t changed my opinion that Albariño is overpriced in the UK. I can imagine that Galician restaurant charging <€10 including glasses, tables, chairs and washing up.

And more worryingly, I could quickly name at least 10 wines under £10 that I would enjoy just as much. My allegation survives, for now.