Recession-proof wines

What wine should we be buying in the months to come - to drink, to lay down and to invest in? Wine tends to be relatively recession proof as ultimately we all need to drown our sorrows. As an investment fine wine has outperformed just about every asset class except oil, certainly the stock exchange. And if the world does collapse, it can always be drunk.

For wines to drink, a statement of the obvious: value for money is what we are all going to be looking for. Let me start with what does not represent value for money: very cheap

wine. That £3.99 bottle in your local supermarket is terrible value - the wine content is only about 20p. Branded wines also represent poor value - you are paying for massive advertising budgets and the brand owners' profit.

Real value for everyday drinking wines is to be found in the £6-£15 range with wines from smaller producers. There the wine content comprises a substantial proportion of your purchase price, and a usually highly-talented wine maker has put his 'all' into the product.

Moving up the scale a little, other great bargains are to be found in the second wines of the great Bordeaux chateaux and sometimes in parcels of declassified wines - by which I mean occasions when those great chateaux have exceeded their production quotas and have to sell the wines