It's easy celebrating Saint David’s Day today. Dish out some lamb cutlets and you’re well on your way to a delicious meal and an excuse to open several bottles in hope of finding a wine to match. Because as a young cut of Welsh lamb is neither quite red meat or white it matches both red and white wine equally well, so pacifying the food-wine matching theorists who insist on matching red wine with red meat and white wine with white meat and fish.

Mid-February means pancakes. And an over-abundance of rosé sparkling wine in the shops. But just because all that left-over pink Valentine’s fizz is on special offer should you give it a go this week with your pancakes? Most definitely yes.

Opening a bottle of wine and then drinking its contents should be an enjoyable experience. But if instead of inviting fruity aromas wafting out of the bottle you're met with a disgusting smell of wet woollen blanket or damp dog then the wine is not fit to drink and is said to be 'corked'.

Buttery, creamy, lemony, rich, sharp and biscuity are just a few of the flavours found in wines made with the Chardonnay grape. This multi-faceted grape variety can be found growing in hundreds of countries around the world, and there are just as many flavours to be found in the resulting wines. But you won’t have to buy an around the world ticket to taste them, all that is required is a quick trip to the supermarket where luckily you’ll find many on special offer.

New Year, new wine gadgets – that’s how the wine industry likes to keep our attention during the post-Christmas slow down. And this year it’s the turn of the Australian wine producer Hardys with their innovative winebox The Freshcase.

Christmas lunch is a tricky business. Because in any large gathering you can be sure that there will be no one set of wine likes and dislikes. So getting in wine made with the well-known fruity grape varieties of Shiraz or Chardonnay is a good idea in a mixed crowd. Aussie Shiraz, with its high alcohol content and slightly sweet flavour, will please most red wine liking palates while a Chilean white will reward those wanting buttery flavours with their beef and roast potatoes.

Port is the wine match of choice for Christmas cake and other seasonal puddings and pastries. But all port tastes sweet, the fortifying dose of brandy sees to that. Adding neat, naturally sweet, alcohol to a normal Portuguese table wine lifts the alcohol level to around the 20 per cent level and increases the rich flavours of the resulting drink.