Let’s start this week with a couple of questions. What is the world’s best-value wine? And what is the world’s best-value fine wine for long ageing?

Does wine have a gender? There was a time when tasting notes would refer to a wine as feminine or masculine — a delicate fragrant chablis might be feminine but a big fruity hermitage from the Rhone would always be masculine.

THERE were many wine, whiskey, beer and cider highlights at the Ballymaloe Literary Festival this year so make sure to put the third weekend of May in your diary for 2015.