I can hardly claim Chateau Bauduc as a personal discovery since Gordon Ramsay, Rick Stein and an oak barrel full of wine writers have recommended this English owned Bordeaux estate before me. But they all seem to focus on the Sauvigon Blanc which has made the house white in the Ramsay restaurants for the past five years (and is also the house white at Chateau Rigaud as it happens!). What they don’t seem to mention is the utterly delicious, nutty, rounded, Trois Hectares Semillion.

I’m deeply unfashionable I know but I just don’t like all that grassy, gooseberries, cats pee stuff and I never have. Fabian and Alex, our wine tour tutors would both explain it all in better terms but I find it spikey whereas a good chardonnay is soft and round and doesn’t give me “Squinty Eye”.

So the Trois Hectares is a good bit more expensive than the Bauduc Sauvignon Blanc but worth the extra money. I think it drinks like a wine which has cost twice as much. Semillion is definitely the “new” Chardonnay for me and it features in my Christmas stocking this year.