Rigorous regulation has been quality wine production’s salvation. Sicilian wine’s seismic shift from nondescript blending fodder for the home market to high quality indigenous varieties exported around the world is ample testimony to the benefits of enforcement. But breaking out of the straitjacket of sometimes stifling conventions and outdated traditions has also proved beneficial: think Super Tuscans, for instance.

Nowhere has the relative absence of rules proved more productive than Chile. The vitality and inventiveness of Chilean winemaking goes a long way to explaining why some of the great French houses – Mouton and Lafite Rothschild, for instance, as well as famous American winemakers such as Robert Mondavi – have invested so heavily there. Chile is now the fifth largest exporter of wines in the world, and the seventh largest producer. Its climate has been called a cross between California and France: it combines a 2,700-mile sea-cooled coast with regions like the Elqui Valley that get less rain than the Gobi desert.