Wine more fitted to a good grocer than Waitrose Buying the wine was Edwin Booth's responsibility for 15 years. "I began to show an uncommon interest in wine tasting," as he puts it. So when I was about 23, the buying director suggested I swap responsibilities with the wine buyer. It was back in the late Seventies when Sainsbury's really started to emerge as a good place for wine. My father would come into my office and say, 'Look I've just had this from Sainsbury's, it's lovely champagne - do you think we could do this? And then I bought this bergerac blanc at Sainsbury's, so I just basically looked at the label, wrote to the people supplying it and said, 'Oh, do you think you can do that for us? That's how it all started. Had he grown up with an ancestral cellar? There's no sense of grandeur. It's a very straightforward Northern family. We'd have wine at Easter, birthdays or when we went out, but it wasn't part of our lives. Booth is easy and unassuming, and when on our walk he stops at a gate to chat to two old boys from Barrow-in-Furness who have stopped to admire the view, his vowels flatten gently to fall in line with theirs and there's a friendly chat about blokes they both remember from their days working in the same warehouse. But he also likes cars and fine wine, does a very good Prince Charles impersonation that comes from having met him (several times) and recently popped up on a newspaper rich list in 903rd position, with Booths having an estimated value of £81 million. What I like is the degree of effort and honesty that goes into the wine, beer and spirits aisle. "Yes, we are commercial," says Booth. If we're giving a product prominence in the store, we'll ask the producer to pay a small premium, as anyone else would, you pay for the pitch. But Booth's is highly unusual in that a "Buyer's Choice" ticket next to a bottle denotes just that: that the buyer felt like highlighting the wine, not that it's been paid for by the producer as part of a rigid promotional timetable. The "We Love" section, where store workers choose bottles and write tasting notes for them, works in the same way. I can't promise they're not putting slow-moving stock in there to get rid of it, but those slots are not part of a transaction. How many other supermarkets can say that? Now that Booth has moved on to running the whole show, the wine and spirits are bought by smiley Andy Green, who's been in the job nearly a year and replaces Sally Holloway, who had built up an impressive range that he'll have to work hard to maintain. Three to try? Domaine Pellehaut Harmonie Blanc 2010 (£5.75), a white blend of ugni blanc, colombard, gros and petit manseng, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. The floral, but clean and satisfying, Adobe Organic Gewürztraminer 2011 Cachapoal, Chile (£7.60). And Bodegas Sierra Norte Pasion de Bobal 2010 Spain (£9.99), a red made from old vine bobal. All worthy of a good local grocer. Domaine de Briançon Chinon 2010 France Loire reds carry a gentle sense of damp, leafy woodland vying with the bright berry scents you find in a summer pudding. It's the cabernet franc that does that. This one, new to M & S, is a superb example; good enough to send a frisson of pleasure down your back as you sniff it. Drink it slightly chilled (rather than frozen to death) and thank your lucky stars for the lovely 2010s. Finest Vina Mara Rioja Reserva 2007 Spain 13.5%, £7.99 down from £9.99 until July 17, Tesco Made for Tesco by Baron de Ley, whose style of rioja I would describe as modern and patrician. It's made entirely from tempranillo and aged in American oak, which gives it a lick of vanilla. Good value when it's on promo and if you're barbecuing under an umbrella this summer, you might want to open some to keep you cosy as you blacken a leg of lamb. Dopff au Moulin Pinot Blanc 2011 Alsace, France 12.5%, £11.90; slurp.co.uk Not exactly a popular choice, either Alsace or pinot blanc, but a mistake to ignore this. Pinot blanc is like the thinking person's pinot grigio. This has a curving texture with immaculately clean edges. In paint-chart terms, you'd be looking at the expensive shades of white. In flavour terms, no oak, subtle apricot kernel, orange, apples and pears, but barely there. Elegant.