One of the things about Aussie red wine when it first started conquering the UK was its renowned drinkability.

It wasn’t like French wines, which need food, and can be off putting to newcomers with its tannins and complexities, it could instead be drunk on its own by anyone.

It was a kind of coca cola wine, rather sweet and a bit sickly. You could almost give it to children, were it not for the alcohol.

Many French wine makers at the time, envious of the success of Aussie wines, called in Aussie winemakers to help them to make similar wines. A big mistake that some are still trying to undo.

Aussie wine moved on though, and we all know that the best can compete with some of the best wines anywhere in the world.Which leads me to Apothic Cab from California.

It’s a blast from the past and the first Apothic not to be a blended wine.A Cabernet Sauvignon of course, hence the name, straight up it reminds me of those ground-breaking Aussie reds, so jammy you could spread it on toast. So dark it absorbs ambient light.

On the nose it’s blackberry to the fore plus plums, and on tasting you get more blackberry, some barrel vanilla tones and jam jam jam.

It’s verging on a sweet wine, there are no real tannins to grip you. It slides down easy.

For me it was rather too sweet, the first glass was okay but then it became too much.Luckily, we had made a curry that night and this suited the Apothic very well.

Sweet wines and especially sweet reds work very well with chili. The sweetness drops away and the subtler flavours come through.In fact, I would say you should only ever drink sweet or sweetish wines with spicy food, anything else is largely a waste of a wine’s subtleties.

Apothic is perhaps best described as a crowd-pleasing red wine, a gateway red wine.

Ideal for people who find red wine too tannic, too difficult and instead usually stick to Chardonnay.And it’s a good choice for curry night.

Apothic Cab (13.5% ABV) is available from supermarkets nationwide. RRP £9.50www.apothic.co.uk