What we drink can have a huge impact on how well the food and the evening as a whole is received. The trouble we face is knowing the best wine to buy to compliment these occasions, and where we can find it at the best price.



Below are some top tips on the wines to buy to help you with your summer entertaining.

Red wines

When it comes to barbeque-wine pairing, red wines are the easiest. For steak lovers try a great Cabernet Sauvignon which will bring out the flavours of the meat. For poultry or pork a Sangiovese will do you well. And for those of you who like you food covered in bbq sauce the wine to buy is a Chianti or a Zinfandel. If you want a great all rounder you can't go wrong with a Merlot, the perfect fit for most things; steak, poultry or pork plus the obligatory bangers and burgers.

White wines

Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon are great wines to buy for vegetarians and fish lovers, being the perfect partner for grilled veg and seafood. For red meat lovers who fancy a touch of white with their meal, try a Pinot Gris or Pinot Blanc. And again for BBQ sauce lovers you can't beat a Riesling.

So once you have identified which wine to buy to help further tantalise the taste buds of your guests, there are a few golden rules you should follow to make sure you get the best bottles and serve them at their best.

Starting with price. The question ?If I spend twice as much, will the wine I buy be twice as good?? is a frequently asked. Generally if you aim to spend under a tenner you will find that quality does increase with price - so a ?6 bottle of wine may well be twice as good as a ?3 bottle and a ?12 bottle twice as good as a ?6 one. But over and above this level the price to taste ratio becomes more subjective.

What about age and years, how does the year impact the taste of the wine you buy? As a guide, most white wines (particularly inexpensive bottles) are best drunk as young as possible - certainly within a year or two of the vintage. Their appeal is in their freshness and fruitiness. Watch out though for some exceptions ? like full bodied whites including Burgundies and other big Chardonnays. Fine Rieslings also generally get better with age.

For reds, don't be fooled into following the myth that red wines should be kept for years. Most red wines nowadays are perfect for drinking quite soon after the vintage. The Australians are masters of this rounded, fruit-driven style. But the French don't follow too far behind and produce some great early-drinking reds, as do the more progressive estates of Spain and Italy.

It's the older generation of red wines, the ones which contain more tannin - the stuff that acts as the wine's natural preservative, which you might want to leave to linger for a while. Big traditional reds can have masses of tannin and do need to be stored for many years before they are soft enough to drink.

And what about the perfect temperature to store the wine you buy? Well we all know that nothing ruins a wine more than serving it at the wrong temperature. Crisp dry whites, ros?, sweet and sparkling wines need at least an hour in the fridge. Less chilling however allows richer whites to show off their complexity so opt for about 30 minutes at most for chilling. Heavy reds served too cold will taste horribly tannic so serve at room temperature but light reds can benefit from being lightly chilled ? about 20 minutes in the cooler.

To find great tasting wines to complete the perfect summers evening why not see what Naked Wines has to offer? With a whole host of wines to buy from small winemakers who want to spend their lives making great wine, rather than selling it, just visit