Here's Ned Halley's last-minute shopping guide to wines for your Christmas table.
At Asda look out for Wishbone Sauvignon Blanc 2012 at £8.00, reduced from £10. Besides the suitability of the name to the festive table, this New Zealand dry white has lashings of grassy-greengage fruit in the best Kiwi sauvignon style, and jumps with fresh liveliness. Will suit smoked salmon and spicy dishes very well.
Smart-looking but astoundingly cheap is Asda Wine Selection Corbières 2012 at £4.25.
This sunny Mediterranean red will do full justice to the roast. It's inky dark, deeply intense, blackberry-pure and balanced, and finishes lipsmackingly clean and bright.
The Co-op has a famed claret on offer this Christmas, Château Sénéjac 2009, down from £16.99 to £13.99. It's worth it. This is a sublime Bordeaux from a great vintage, now coming round nicely with authentic tobacco-cedar whiffs and rich cassis fruit. Lovely already, but it will develop for years. Larger stores only.
Lidl has excelled this year with the new Wine Cellar range of upmarket brands. I have just tried the most expensive of them, Brunello di Montalcino Medici Riccardi 2008 at £19.99 and can firmly recommend it. Brunello is an exotic grape related to the sangiovese of Chianti, and Montalcino is the beautiful hilltown of Tuscany surrounded by the vineyards.
The wines are usually scandalously expensive, but this authentic example is fairly priced. It's gorgeous, of course, richly textured with truffly notions amidst the lavish dark fruit flavours, perfectly balanced in the best tradition. Good with turkey? I'll say.
Among Lidl's Wine Cellar whites, my pick is the Chablis 2012 at £7.69. It has the proper flinty aroma, oyster-shell minerality and brightly ripe fruit that so distinguishes the unique Chablis spin on the chardonnay grape. Outstanding value for this quality.
At Morrisons Laurent Perrier Cuvée Rosé Brut Champagne is reduced to £32.99 from £57.99 until Christmas Eve. This is a starry champagne made, very unusually, by the tricky method of leaving the grape skins in contact with the new-pressed juice to extract the colour rather than the standard practice of mixing a bit of red wine into the white-wine base. It is avowedly the best of all non-vintage pink fizzes, at an unheard-of price.
Louis Max Mercurey 2010 reduced from £17.99 to £14.99 at Sainsbury's is just the kind of red burgundy that suits a roasted bird. It's earthy, vivid and richly developed pinot noir of enticing silkiness and in its attractive bottle looks every inch the part.
From southern France, Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Pic St Loup 2011 (£7.49 reduced from £9.99) is an unusually affordable red from a fashionable spot; it's a proper winter warmer with a sweetly ripe blackberry-pie aroma and matching spicy dark fruit flavours. A distinctively delicious match for meaty dishes.
Tesco is busily promoting its Finest range of own-label wines this month, so look out for discounts on some very good buys. For a lavish white-wine match to the turkey invest in Finest Meursault 2011. Even at £19.99 this is good value for a rich burgundy labelled with forgivable fervour for its bouquet of "milk, bread, hazelnut, toast, roasted almonds and honey." It's a truly luscious classic chardonnay already drinking well.
A safe, economic and deliciously satisfying red for the Christmas table is Tesco Finest Côtes Catalanes 2012 at £6.99. It's a dark and brambly wine from Perpignan with a lovely heft and spicy ripeness.
At Waitrose, there is an incomparably good choice of Beaujolais wines – an ideal juicy match for the turkey and for Boxing Day cold cuts too. My pick this year is Henry Fessy Brouilly 2011 at £11.99. It has the wild purple raspberry bounce of the gamay grape and plenty of grip into the bargain.
This is "cru" Beaujolais from one of the ten zones making wines under their own appellations. It's not cheap, but it looks perky and tastes the part.
To finish the festive meal a sweet wine makes an extravagant match for (or dare I say it, a substitute for) the Christmas pud. Try Torres Floralis Moscato Oro, down from £9.29 to £7.39 at Waitrose. In a gleefully gaudy gilded 50cl bottle, this yummily honeyed, marzipan-rich, orange-scented and elegantly balanced sweetie is made by the esteemed Torres family in Spain, and is in a class of its own.
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