THE famous former Ilkley chef Marco Pierre White is apparently to return to the area when he opens his new restaurant in Leeds next year.

To give this mildly interesting news wider coverage in the press and on TV, the boys and girls in the public relations department added a bit of extra spice by announcing that on the wine list will be a bottle of Chateau d'Yquem 1847, available at £30,000 a throw.

The trick worked of course as all the

newspapers in the region covered the story extensively.

As usual with all stories about wine in the press there is a basic assumption that most of us would not know a bottle of cheap

plonk from the most exquisite claret or Burgundy.

Newspapers ring up their nearest wine expert to wax lyrical on the merits of the

particular wine in question, while still reporting the story in the familiar

tongue-in-cheek fashion.

It is the usual reaction of the popular and ignorant to the snobbish and pretentious worlds unknown to the majority of

newspaper readers.

Though a long-time fan of red wine, I have tried in vain to wrest the smells of quince, hedgehog pee, saddle leather or cigar box from my favourite tipple.

Hours of sticking my nose in the glass and sniffing like a desperate cocaine addict

elicited nothing more complex than the

smell of grapes so I gave up trying to be Oz Clarke and just got on with drinking the stuff.

After about the fifth glass the whole world reeks of wonder anyway so it does not matter what the wine smells like.

One of my favourite cartoons appeared in Punch a few years ago when it was still an amusing magazine.

A middle-aged couple were sat at a table in an upmarket restaurant while an extremely smartly dressed waiter held out a bottle of wine to them, label first.

"You'll like this one, It will make you both very drunk," he was saying.

It was then I realised that so-called wine connoisseurs were just posh drunks.

If you had visitors round the house for the first time and showed them a collection of hundreds of crates of different lagers in the cellar, they would assume you were a raving alcoholic.

If you showed the same visitors racks and racks of dusty vintage wine bottles they would be extremely impressed with their obviously cultured and discerning host.

My miserable attempts to emulate wine tasters have now been abandoned, and for the benefit of people like me who have failed to extract anything more than a wet nose from sticking it into a wine glass I have come up with my own guide to good wine.

A. It doesn't matter what country or region red wine comes from as long as it has at least 12 per cent alcohol content - anything less will taste like the nasty vats of

watery Chianti served in cheap Italian restaurants.

B. The best bottle of wine I ever had was Hungarian, although two subsequent bottles of the same wine were not as good so I am convinced that mood, company and food have a lot to do with the enjoyment.

C. Forget vintages, no-one nowadays makes wine to be kept in cellars for the the next few hundred years or so, and all wine making is so scientific the weather is irrelevant.

D. France is the only country in the world that can still get away with selling a awful bottle of wine for over a fiver - wine from anywhere else at that price will be usually excellent.

E. Never listen to any pretentious expert claptrap about wine; drink what you like and develop your own tastes. People who enjoy smelling saddle leather or cigar boxes should go to a stable or Havana, not to the wine shop.

F. Portugese wine is vastly underrated, under-priced and generally excellent on its own or with richer food.

G. Port is an exalted drink made in heaven but its after-affects were manufactured in the other place. Unless you have an iron will to limit yourself to one or two glasses, or a security guard to lock it in the safe once opened, best to avoid having it in the house.

The views expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the paper. Comments on the column should be sent to Wharfedale Newspapers, 9 Orchard Gate, Otley, LS21 3NX.

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