There’s a battle going on for premium position on the digestif trolley, and it’s one that doesn’t favour the little guy. Our panellists strike a blow for the underdog with a flight of 15- to 20-year-old Armagnacs. Clinton Cawood report

Holograms, vintage champagne, and some great food matches - the launch of Dom Pérignon 2003.

Older vintage champagne might not be the easiest of sells, but it can give you amazing options for food matching. Particularly, says Margaret Rand, with trickier dishes

Many pink wines are more akin to dental mouthwash than wine. If it’s a bit of the gen-u-wine food-friendly rosé you’re after, guv’nor, you want to be lookin’ at this Provence stuff, says Giles Fallowfield

Matching wines with the complex and often spicy flavours of Szechuan cuisine is a real challenge. Margaret Rand meets two brothers who have devised a system that means you need never again be stuck between a wok and a hard place...

In the second of our three-part series on the basics of food and wine-matching, Hakkasan’s wine buyer Christine Parkinson tells us how to go about pairing wines with meat