Five hundred varieties of wine line the walls at The Stem & Stein in Madison. Bottled in Alabama or squeezed in the Napa Valley, the wine, from red to white to sweet to dry, sits on shelves that nearly touch the ceiling.

The language of wine can be so confusing. In some instances very unappetising connotations are made to the smell or even the taste of wine.

At a recent wine-tasting event, I was listening to friends discuss a wine that we were tasting.

Many people have written to me over the years expressing their dismay at the sorry state of restaurant wine. Usually they complain about high restaurant prices and ask how they can possibly be justified. They are seldom satisfied with my answer - restaurants charge high prices because people will pay them. Now, however, the critique has shifted to the wines themselves and what they reveal about wine in America.

'A Meal Without Wine Is Like A Day Without Sunshine' - a phrase first written by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a 19th Century French gastronome who also wrote the less attractive "A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye"! (And I've seen a few of them after a bout of tequila drinking, I can tell you). Lucas & Hayley of Keep Calm Gallery have produced two hand pulled screen prints on recycled off-white paper (sized 23 by 12 inches) of this famous phrase. As they say, the cheese quote isn't quite as an attractive phrase to have hung on your wall. Each print costs £18 unframed - although you can have them frame it for you too. Prints can be sent world wide. The Keep Calm Gallery championed the governments World War Two phrase 'Keep Calm and Carry on' (available on tea towels and such like). There was a rather humorous take on this plastered on the side of a shopping bag I spotted today in London - 'It's all going shit, so buy more stuff' (or words to tha

Pre-revolutionary Cognac, great Bordeaux including a Cheval Blanc 1928, and other rareties are being auctioned in December as 18,000 bottles from La Tour d'Argent go under the hammer.

They might not pick as many white grapes at Villa Appalachia in Floyd County this fall, but the harvest should make for better wine.

Many a museum exhibition has a postcard, coffee mug or calendar to sell in the gift shop, all the better to remember the artwork by. There are few that have their own special bottle of wine. But would we expect anything less where royalty is concerned? For...