In this wine business you learn not to be influenced, or put off, by names. I well remember in the years I had Australia as part of my patch a very great red wine called “Seaview”. No, it wasn’t a Sydney Boarding House but a wine estate near Adelaide.

So it is with Grand Opera: not a night at La Scala but one of the best red Corbieres I have discovered. Grand Opera comes from the ROCBERE stable at Portel just south of Narbonne. Rocbere is the largest of the Corbieres growers and one of the oldest. A tourist “must” is their souterrain series of caves “Terra Vinea” in an old silver/gypsum mine that stretch a mile under the hills and stay at a constant 160C winter and summer.

Grand Opera has flavours of plum and peach and should be decanted an hour before drinking. If you start sipping earlier it just gets better and better. I’m drinking the 2003 and at £4 a bottle (Magnums are available at £8) you can lay it down – not for your grandchildren but you and you wife in five years time.