Recently described by Lettie Teague, the wine writer of The Wall Street Journal, as “the most Mediterranean wine in the world”, vermentino is rapidly becoming the most quaffed and quaffable of reasonably priced white wines.

Fashion in wine is, of course, as impenetrable as any other. But it is undoubtedly true that the supermarket buyers are the chief wielders of influence in the modern world of wine. Their buying power and distribution potential can catapult a wine or grape variety from obscurity into household currency, securing stratospheric sales in the process. Such a trajectory does not, of course, always correspond with quality. Think, for instance, of the ubiquitous, but all-too-often vapid pinot grigio or, in its blandest incarnations, chardonnay.