It takes no time at all to acquire a bad reputation, but as long as a lifetime to shed it. This sombre truth extends to wine too. As the popular predilection for wine consumption burgeoned in Britain during the 1970s, the reputation of some wines suffered so severely that they are only now regaining the reputation they rightly deserve. Hungarian wine’s reputation, for instance, was scuppered in the Seventies by the profusion of Bull’s Blood; German wine by sickly sweet Liebfraumilch; Portuguese wine by hammer-heavy marketing of Mateus Rosé; and Italian wine, both red and white respectively, by the veritable tide of vapid Valpolicella and bland Soave from the Veneto region. Gallons of both titillated the untutored tastebuds of vast swathes of the population.