People who talk about wine rarely mention their conflicts of interest, so let me put mine front and centre: my first dinner date with my now wife included a bottle of Nero d’Avola. It was a wine that was somehow both supple and robust and met that most difficult of pairing challenges, working well with a curry. A series of coincidences had wines made with the same grape appear in a number of other important moments in my life over the next decade. So I guess you can say I have a soft spot for it.

More suspicious readers might be thinking I am coming up with excuses for a somewhat embarrassing preference. You see, in recent years, Nero d’Avola has joined the rank of the decidedly démodé, the type of thing that looked like a good idea in the 1990s, but you wouldn’t necessarily admit to it now, like watching Family Matters or listening to Savage Garden.