Every little helps; Liquid News.

Byline: Fiona Ennys

UNLIKE, it seems, so many MPs, I don't have the luxury of claiming hundreds of pounds a month from the taxpayer for my household bills. So unfortunately, I'm afraid I can't ask you all to indulge my love of fine wines and delicious dishes.

Instead, I have to pay for it myself out of something called 'my own money' - an odd concept for most of our 'right honourables'. And that money has to work doubly hard in these tough financial times.

So here's a little praise for the canny Scouse boss of Tesco, Terry Leahy. While the 'no frills' stores like Lidl and Aldi are currently doing a fine job of tempting savvy shoppers, Leahy is also doing his own bit to ease the effects of the crunch for loyal customers.

The chain currently has a promotion in which its Clubcard members, who receive a quarterly cash-back on every qualifying pounds they spend, can double - or even quadruple - the value of their return.

Which is why I was at customer services this week clutching loyalty vouchers of pounds 20, which were then doubled up to pounds 40 to spend on wine. No hardship there then.

Better still, there were lots of wine offers available, too, which all qualified for my doubled-up spend.

Now I know that I have argued in the past that alcohol sold too cheaply is a factor in binge drinking. But, in my defence, I wasn't planning to drink it all at once, just to stock the wine rack for the coming summer.

So into the trolley went some lovely light whites and roses - new world and old - averaging out at around pounds 5 a bottle.

I was particularly pleased to pick up the, admittedly rather-garishly labelled, Argentinian Buenos Aires chenin blanc/torrontes blend (12.5%abv) from a co-operative in Mendoza.

In the past I've paid almost pounds 6 a bottle for this, so I was rather chuffed to snap it up at a spot-on price of three for pounds 10.

It's a lovely ripe and juicy dry white which I'm looking forward to enjoying well-chilled on a warm summer's evening.

The beautiful, salmon-pink colouring of a Tesco Finest Navarra Rose (reduced price pounds 3.99, 12.5%abv) persuaded me to include a couple of bottles of this 100% garnacha wine from Spain in my bargain basket. It's a deliciously crisp mouthful of red-berry fruits - you'll get the taste of strawberries in there - that will, again, take plenty of chilling.

Both of them are well worth every one of those put-upon pennies - important when you're spending your own money and not somebody else's.

Fiona Ennys