Those of us at the outer spokes rather than at the world’s financial hubs are understandably keen to know how the current economic turmoil will affect our particular sphere. Early reports suggest that in most commercial sectors it is the middle ground that will suffer most.

Certainly in wine there seems little slackening of demand for the most expensive trophy products made, in strictly limited quantities, by the top producers of France. And at the bottom end, just as UK mass market retailers were starting to ask more realistic prices for their cheaper offerings, they are now desperately trying to source wines at 1990s or even 1980s prices to sell as “value wines”. It seems as though it will be mid-priced wines that will suffer in our newly straitened circumstances.