The Daily Mail

World Cup fever is already in the air for MATTHEW JUKES as he looks back to 1966 and reveals that England's year of glory on the football pitch was a pretty good vintage for wine as well.

Long before the New World's gems started appearing on our shores, Europe's finest wine regions had a wonderful harvest.'

For readers who would rather not fork out hundreds of pounds on the increasingly rare bottled proof of this declaration, Jukes recommends a few more recent examples of fine French wine.

These include 2001 Vosne-Romane, Domaine Mugneret-Gibourg, Burgundy (22.35; Haynes, Hanson & Clark).