Such is the variety of Italian wines that, if you were to taste a different one each week, it would take you 20 years to taste your way through Italy from top to bottom, dalla testa in giù. And as for quantity, as of last year, Italy has overtaken France and Spain as the world’s largest wine producer – 1,011 million gallons in 2019.

But all is not well. Production this year is expected to be 16 per cent less, according to Italy’s Wine Union; and Italy’s export market, worth £2.3 billion, will almost certainly be dented by Brexit. Desperate times call for desperate measures and the official guardians of Italy’s most iconic and best-known red wine, Chianti, are desperate to broaden its appeal to younger drinkers in general and women consumers in particular, as well as to expand sales in the Americas and the East. To this end, the Chianti Classico Wine Consortium, founded in 1924 and now representing more than 3,000 growers, has gained government approval to raise Chianti’s residual sugar levels. The effect of this change will be to soften the wine rather than sweeten it.