Two things have been nagging at me ever since I discovered the delights of shopping in the Lidl supermarket in Arklow. It costs so much less than other supermarket chains that you can't help but wonder how big a margin the other multiples work on. Good and cheap olive oil, passata, tinned fish - but I digress, this column is about wine. So there it is on the wine shelves, Lambrusco Rose at €2.49 a bottle. Which brings me to the first of my unsolved mysteries. Assuming that Lidl do actually make a profit, then discount the cost of the bottle, the labelling, the packaging, the transport from Italy, the VAT, the distribution costs and not least the excise duty, then how much can this liquid cost at source? 10 cents? Anyway I couldn't resist anything priced so low and I bought two bottles.

This brought me to the second of my unsolved puzzles. What makes us retain prejudices about wine? It's a tricky one, as the naff wines, the ones only an uninformed oaf would drink, are constantly changing. It used to be deeply naff in my youth to drink Hirondelle, a cheap French wine of indeterminate origins. Then it was the turn of Blue Nun and Mateus Rose to be the butt of cheap gags. Later on it was Black Tower and Piat d'Or. Today we could offer a few alternatives for the uncool wine of the decade; maybe Jacob's Creek would fit the bill. You see what all these wines have in common is that they all, without exception, taste just fine. They please a huge number of palates and sell, or sold, in quantities that make their competitors weep.

So what makes wine snobs turn up their noses at a wine that sells more than any other - like Jacob's Creek for instance? It the pleasant taste? The reasonable price? Can't really be either of those. No, I think the answer might lie in the fact that it's available everywhere, from your local Spar to the nearest petrol station, plus the fact that it's acceptable to vast numbers of people. It's like the paintings by Tretchikov that so irked the art establishment of the seventies and eighties. An artist written off by the experts as hackneyed and cliched, sold more paintings than anyone else, despite the judgement of the wise.

Look at it the other way round and it makes a little more sense. How can a wine that everyone likes, is easy to find and easy to afford, appeal to a wine buff? Where's the mystery, where's the discovery of a rarity, where's the story of terroir and the grower's personal history? If a wine is too accessible it can't hold much mystique. If it's cheap, much the same applies; we worry that it can't be good if it isn't expensive. So here's an exception to the rule.

Wine of the Week

Lambrusco Rose.

Low in alcohol (4%), it's very easy drinking in the style of a refreshing fruit drink. For a sunny afternoon on the lawn it's perfect - you won't get drunk and you won't empty your wallet.
Available Lidl Supermarkets €2.49