Another week and yet more pressure is put on the EU's wine regulatory body to shake things up and step into the 21st century. Winemakers in the New World vineyards of California, Australia and New Zealand have been producing wines with lower alcohol content for years, yet Europe still hasn't caught onto this good idea.

The EU is contemplating banning the sale and production of wines with reduced alcohol content, despite the fact that some vineyards are ready to export to the EU.

There are two methods for producing low-alcohol wines; one is to harvest the grapes earlier so that they are less sweet and produce less alcohol in the end – this practice is allowed but hardly employed in the European Union. It is common in countries such as Canada and the UK, whose climates mean that grapes reach harvest stage earlier than in hotter countries.

The second method, which involves de-alcoholising matured wine by process of reverse osmosis, is outlawed by the EU.

However, commentators put the EU's stubborn stance down to snobbery and pressure is building to make way for change. Jean-Louis Escudier, director of the wine unit at the French National Institute for Agronomic Research, completed a body of work which proves that an alcohol percentage point drop of around 3% will not be noticed by your average wine drinker and could, effectively save lives and help consumers' health.

Mr Escudier said: “In blind tastings, French consumers like quality wines with a reduced alcohol content as much as standard wines. In other words, you can go from 14pc to 11pc or from 13pc to 10pc without a problem.”