The Case for Drinking on a Tuesday

A Guardian wine columnist makes an argument against 'for best' culture and for the unremarkable pleasure of a decent £12 bottle on a school night. Five specific bottles, all under £14.

There's a particular kind of domestic austerity that has nothing to do with money — the saving of things for occasions that never quite arrive. The M&S little eats that stay in the fridge. The good candles that go unlit. The bottle brought back from holiday that waits on a shelf until it's too old to enjoy. This column is a small act of resistance against that instinct. The argument here isn't about drinking more. It's about the texture of an ordinary evening. The writer opens with a genuinely good tomato sauce from the new Ottolenghi book — garlicky, vinegar-spiked — and the natural fact that it called for wine. That's the frame: wine as a condiment for life rather than a ceremonial object. The budget anchor of around £12 a bottle is well-chosen and unusually transparent. The breakdown — £4.87 to VAT and duty, leaving just over £7 for everything else — is the kind of number that reframes every future supermarket purchase. At this price point, you are not buying prestige; you are buying the efficiency of a region that has figured out how to make good wine cheaply. Sicily, the Languedoc, Portugal, the Dão: these are the places that deliver. The five picks are specific and defensible. The M&S Found Encruzado at £8.50 is the value anchor — encruzado is an underappreciated Portuguese white that punches above its weight in texture. The Wine Society's Falanghina 2025 at £10.75 (listed as £10.50 on the product page) is the kind of expressive southern Italian white that earns its keep from weeknight pasta to Christmas parties. The Berry Bros fino at £13.50 is the left-field pick — dry sherry with pasta is a pairing that most people have never tried and almost everyone enjoys once they do. Cuvée Alice 2023, a low-intervention carignan/grenache blend from Corbières at £12.45, is the red that started the whole column. And the Ciello Nero d'Avola at £11.50 is the utility player: crunchy, organic, pairs with everything. What the column does quietly well is the negative recommendation. The note that Tesco's Finest Langhe Nebbiolo at £12 was 'unforgivingly acidic' is more useful than five more positive picks. It articulates a principle: buy wines that are naturally affordable rather than cheaper versions of expensive ones. Nebbiolo is a grape that needs either age or money; at £12, you are buying neither. That's honest wine writing.