I’m wary of wine suggestions for the year ahead though wine means food and going overboard now and again is good therapy. The best Paris restaurants are worth the experience and here is one occasion. I visited Paris in 2010 with daughter Alice and we met up with her hyper-crazed friend Valérie. What a day, then late afternoon they asked, ‘what’s next’, and together announced, ‘take us to a fancy restaurant’. ‘Of course, but we have no booking, so the three stars are out’. ‘Let me try’ said Valérie so I passed over the Michelin with Arpége at the top. Only gifted, non-stop crazies can talk their way in, so it was Arpége for 7.30.

Next, they needed cash for appropriate outfits and returned an hour later dressed as matching versions of the Eiffel Tower. We were the first to arrive and the last to leave, Arpége being a place where the first dinners arrive around 9.00. The staff had worked out we would provide the entertainment for the evening, and we did our best. (Valérie is now a psychiatrist)

I leave you with these thoughts for 2025 which becomes my 50th year retailing wine.

• Retail price maintenance was bad for wine consumers and this was traded, in 1975, for discounting and we are now in the post discounting era of excessive prices which is bad for consumers.

• Wine began as a beverage to be drunk young, yet over time reds were divided off as a drink for more solemn occasions. Yet when young with very low extraction and bursting with complex fruits, reds are the best of all drinks.

• There are 10,000 grape varieties and 2000 are used each vintage to make wine, somewhere. About 10, account for over 50% of the wine made globally. The rest, called alternatives, provide endless new experiences. Try them.

• When buying wine for Farmer Bros shops the starting point was to taste and then form a view of how the quality and selling price, balanced. You may be surprised to know that many retail wine buyers are only interested in the deal and promote wines of no drinking merit.

• Measured over a short time span we seem to resist change but over ten years 50% of wines stocked in retail stores are new. This is accelerating with the digital age and the change in retail buying patterns.

• Over the last 30 years wines termed organic, biodynamic, natural, and clean plus celebrity branding and brands of no meaning, have appeared. You are being exposed to mischief sold at silly prices. Remain the common-sense wine drinker and you are safe.

Lastly, three recent wines continuing the Glug way, Goat Square Barossa Valley Grenache Shiraz Mataro 2023, Old Moppa Road Barossa Valley Durif 2020, and Old Moppa Road Barossa Valley Primitivo 2023.

So, Drink Widely and Drink Well,

David Farmer