We tried two of the Boschendal wines, the Chenin Blanc and the Shiraz, recently and were impressed with each of them. These two South African wines were each very good and we thought were well priced. In our view they represent good value for money, perhaps wines to consider for your festive tables.

Baileys really know their main market is Xmas, much as they would like to move it on into all year drinking. Somehow the British psyche associates Baileys with Xmas as much as it does Warninks Avocaat and Stone’s Ginger Wine, drinks my parents would put out on the sideboard every year for the 18 years I lived at home.

We sampled the Laithwaites’ New Zealand Showcase recently and I was very impressed by these lovely bright and vibrant creations form the New World. Each of these wines are a great advertisement for New Zealand winemaking, it’s perfectly clear why the people at Laithwaites have put this mixed case together.

Demijohn may just have some products to lift your Christmas spirits this year. The Demijohn range of products is extensive, their website has many gift ideas. You might find, or be able to create, just the thing you are looking for.

‘When you make rum just to make rum, you make Ron Zacapa.”Those would be famous last words if they weren’t the first thing that Master Blender Lorena Vasquez tells Qin Xie about Ron Zacapa, the Guatemalan rum brand established in 1976 to celebrate the centenary of the city of Zacapa. Qin Xie met Lorena at Rumfest to learn more about the rum, which although hasn’t officially been launched in the UK, has been growing in popularity amongst bartenders and now the public.

De Bortoli Wines is a third generation family company established in Australia back in 1928 after Vittorio and Guiseppina De Bortoli emigrated there from Northern Italy. The family continue to produce some wines that were made when the winery started up all those years ago, whilst developing new varieties through the generations. We tried three of the De Bortoli range recently and excellent wines they were too.

This is an excellent, very pale, white that’s great to drink either on its own or with food. As you pour the wine and lift it to your nose you get clean grassy and delicate floral notes, giving the impression that it’s quite light, but nothing could be further from the truth.

They say the devil has the best tunes, does he have the best wines though and will they all be red? Nick Harman ascends from the cellar to the top floor of Soho’s Gautier to meet the devil’s right hand man Marcelo Papa and pair his wines with Gauthier’s food.

‘It’s probably not going to make me a millionaire,’ said Shabani as the barman charged our glasses for the third time before we decamped to another Mayfair stockist. ‘In fact it’s going to take three years to break even,’ he added. Douglas Blyde hears a tail of Konik’s Vodka.

When invited to the wine tasting that Laithwaites put on recently, at Altitude 360, I was hardly going to turn down the opportunity, some excellent wines and a stunning venue at the top of one of the south bank’s tallest buildings. I just had to go.