Archaeologists have unearthed the oldest wine-making facility ever found, using biochemical techniques to identify a dry red vintage made about 6,000 years ago in what is now southern Armenia.

It's taken a reality-TV show for Shaun Ryder to finally be cast in the best light – and not just in terms of his character.

I can't remember a time when there were as many refreshingly drinkable reds for summer as there are today. I don't think it's just my own taste that's changed but I am increasingly attracted in summer to red wines that are light to medium in body, that have little or no oak, and that, lightly chilled, are wonderfully refreshing. These are wines that don't leave you feeling that you've been dealt a right hook of oak, an uppercut of tannin and then a knock-out blow of high alcohol levels.

"Didn't Persephone eat the pomegranate pips though it condemned her... to six months of every year in the underworld?" Sarah Gabriel has consumed the obscene fruit of death. So did her mother in her prime. In the Greek myth, when the flower maiden Persephone is raped to the underworld, the corn goddess Demeter lays the world waste, abdicating her function as guarantor of harvest and civilisation. For mother and daughter are indissolubly one being. On their joint survival, life on Earth depends.