Cheers! The bill for Whitehall’s wine list

Wine barrels in Burgundy – one of the most terroir-conscious of the French wine regions. Photograph: Paul Cooper/Rex Features

So the Johnson and Truss administrations spent £27,000 on wines and spirits between 2020 and 2022 (Report, 11 January). That’s about £173 a week to give every foreign guest of Britain a drink.

As the minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) who was in charge of the government wine cellar, which involved tastings of burgundies to lay down for 30 years, when the bottles cost £30 a piece, that seems very modest.

Compared to the Meursault or Puligny-Montrachet that Guardian political journalists poured into me to open my lips on FCO and No 10 gossip (see page 325 of my book, Labour Takes Power: The Denis MacShane Diaries 1997-2001), the present Tory regime is positively abstemious.
Denis MacShane
Former Europe minister

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