In Elizabeth David’s 1960 classic French Provincial Cooking there is a recipe for coq au vin taken from La Cloche d’Or restaurant in Dijon.

Along with the cockerel, bacon, onions, garlic, stock and bay, the list of local ingredients includes “a bottle of old burgundy”.

It strikes me that this is exactly the kind of instruction to frighten a nervous cook. A bottle of old burgundy – or even David’s modification, “inexpensive but sound red burgundy” – is not the kind of thing that most of us have knocking about the kitchen. “Sound”, or for that matter unsound, red burgundy tends to start some distance north of a tenner, while the price of “old red burgundy” sets off gracefully towards the stratosphere. When most of us are generally unwilling to pay that much on a bottle to drink, why would we choose to squander our rare bottle of splash-out wine by splashing it in a glorified stew?

The same question applies to any dish that calls for wine. Just how good does the wine need to be? Or, if the recipe asks for a precise variety or region, just how authentic? Will it really make any difference if I just throw in some of the nearest bottle of plonk?