Richard Enrlich on drink

Dare to be different

I'm always wary of books that purport to lift the lid on doubtful doings in some field or other. It's well-nigh impossible to be consistently successful when playing the role of self-styled iconoclast. You Heard It Through the Grapevine (Aurum Press, £9.99) by Stuart Walton, takes aim at the wine trade, and it has some interesting things to say. Whether it has a whole book's-worth of them I can't decide, but it's undoubtedly a stimulating and amusing read.

One of Walton's more contentious theses contradicts an orthodoxy that you often hear: that UK wine drinkers have never had it so good, and that wines and grape varieties coming from all over the world give us an unprecedented choice about what we can drink. Well, Walton will have none of that. For every interesting bottle, he argues, there are 100 boring, easy-drinking Chardonnays and Merlots and south Australian Shirazes, all tasting more or less the same.

Walton has a point, except that I can't help feeling he's looking at the glass as half empty rather than half full. Yes, those Identikit bottles are there. But they haven't driven the interesting stuff to extinction, they've merely made it harder to find within the forest of mediocrity. You have to work harder to separate the wheat from the chaff. Of course, most people can't be bothered; that's why the boring Chardonnays etc survive. For the rest of us, making the choice relies on knowledge, effort and confidence.

Which is easy for me to say: I get paid to do this stuff. But not everyone goes to tastings or reads specialist publications. If you get any advice on wine, it's likely to be from wine writers ­ a species among which, according to Walton, corruption is more or less endemic. And, even if we're not all as tainted as Walton makes out, we can only provide so much guidance in any given week.

Anyway, if you're still battling against the problem of too many bottles that all look too alike, here's my solution: choose what is most alien-sounding. Here are just three examples: you'll find the Hungarian Irsai Oliver 2000 at Safeway for just £2.99: a grapey, citrussy cocktail at a ridiculous price. Irsai Oliver is the name of the grape, and I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a £2.99 wine. Neptune Carignan 2000, Vin de Pays Des Côteaux du Luberon at Tesco for £3.99 is a fleshy fruit-pop of indecent fun; modern technique working hard in a long-established but little-fêted vineyard area. And you'll find Gaia Thalassistis 2000, made on Santorini from the Assyrtiko grape and sold by Oddbins for £7.49. This Greek marvel has some of the weirdest flavours ­ could that be artichoke? ­ I've encountered in a white wine.

Do these wines prove that Walton is wrong to complain about dumbed-down wine-buying? Of course not. But we're not powerless when it comes to asserting a drinker's right to choose. We just have to look around.