One for the rack

How do you feel about supermarket branded wines? The supermarkets themselves profess to be very proud of them. Sainsbury's, for instance, sees its Classic Selection as "benchmark wines that display very typical characteristics. If someone wants to know what a chablis ought to taste like, they can find out by tasting ours". Tesco, meanwhile, says that its Finest range (is it just me, or is there something inadvertently offputting and "best we could manage under the circumstances, luv" about that word?) is very important because customers trust the Tesco brand and rely on it to steer them towards a good wine.

Being a thoroughly nasty piece of work at heart, I've always viewed such wines with a mixture of cynicism and snobbery. After all, what are the priorities of a business such as Tesco that can announce pre-tax profits in excess of £2bn? And even if I were to feel glad as well as thrifty about opening a supermarket-labelled bottle, it's not going to look very artisan alongside the poncy cheese and homemade organic minestra when friends come round for dinner, is it?

The truth is that, like most other things, such wines are a mixed bag, but here is one whose right to stand proudly on any table I would defend to the hilt (especially as summer approaches): Tesco Finest Gavi 2004 (£5.99), from Italy. This really is a delightful wine: made from the cortese grape, it has a lithe, lemony flavour and - don't run away, all of you with oak-phobias about white wine - a portion of it has been aged for a short time in barrique. You probably won't even be able to taste the wood, but you'll notice how it softens the edges of the wine so that, in your mouth, it feels like a river pebble that has been smoothed and rounded by the flow of water; it also gives it an extra bit of body and lift. None of this detracts from the wine's freshness. It would be lovely to sip over lunch with a plate of salad, before dinner, during dinner or, in fact, at any time.

A couple of other supermarket whites that impressed recently are Tesco Finest Great Southern Riesling 2003 (£5.99), a bold and vivid wine with steely, citrus notes and a whiff of the vibrant tropical fruits - try it with food flavoured with lemongrass and chilli. The other is Sainsbury's Classic Selection Alsace Gewürztraminer Cave de Turckheim 2003 (£6.99). People often say the gewürztraminer grape tastes and smells of lychees, and in this example those lychees are so clear you can almost feel your tongue slipping over their eyeball-like white flesh. So drink it with - what else? - a Chinese.

What do you recommend?

My boss has given me a 1994 rioja with 'Tinto gran reserva', 'Faustino I', and 'Bodegas Faustino Martinez' on the label, which also sports an Oliver Cromwell lookalike. The bottle is grey and wrapped in gold-coloured netting. Should it be drunk now or laid down? And what can I expect?

Faustino is a big but still family-owned brand with a decent reputation and whose wines are much loved by consumers for their approachability. Now for the Antiques Roadshow moment when I reveal the price: Faustino I Gran Reserva sells at between £13.62 to £14.99 (you can get it at Oddbins, Asda, Sainsbury's, Tesco, Thresher and Unwins, among others), although, if you like yours enough to buy more, note that most stockists have moved on to the 1995 vintage. (I tasted this last week, and it is deliciously warming and mellow, though I'd say it was light and easy-drinking, rather than amazing.) Faustino says its wine 'peaks six to 14 years after the vintage date', so you're safe to drink your one now. (By the way, the character on the label is apparently Amsterdam cloth merchant Nicolaes van Bambeeck, as painted by Rembrandt in 1641.)

Rioja is not one of the best value wines around, but it can be delicious: here are a couple of cheaper ones from the supermarket shelves. Viña Amezola Crianza 2001 (£8.69, Booths) packs in a lot of rich fruit, while Navajas Reserva 1998 (£7.99, Morrisons, Safeway) is more chilled out. I especially like the fact that it has some of those dirty rioja flavours: leather, tobacco and cedary wood spice.

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