January is a time to look ahead in hope and my main hope for 2018 is that independent, quality wine shops can stay in business. 

This week’s column is all about the new as none of the wines below are in the country more than a few weeks. There are two from Lidl and four Spanish wines from Wines Direct who have a knack of ferreting out interesting wines.

Despite all the words this page has expended on a myriad of wines, the reason we are interested is because they all have one thing in common — “the power to banish care”.

I RETURN to the wines of Spain again this week which I realise is starting to become a bit of a habit.