Time was when the only wine you could find in the shops came in a carton, or had a name such as Blue Nun. But no more. Thanks to the vast choice now available in the supermarkets – from bargain New World wines to France’s finest vintages – sales in Britain are rocketing. And according to a recent report by Vinexpo, the wine fair, by 2010 the market will be the biggest in Europe, worth £5.5 billion.

But unless you’re an oenophile (that’s a wine buff to you and me) it can be difficult knowing which bottle to choose, let alone what food it will best accompany. Many people are probably considering right now the perfect tipple to complement their Christmas turkey, and the web can help, allowing you to avoid pompous wine bores in the process.

Online, you can learn how to taste a wine and how to understand the jargon that accompanies it. There are guides to the best that the supermarkets have to offer and specialist online retailers that will bring the best wines of the world to your doorstep. Cheers to that.

GETTING STARTED

The first step is learning how to taste the vino. Knowing why you like a certain wine – perhaps because of its fruity flavour, lemony zest or lush vanillas – makes it easier to choose another that will please.

Tools to help you develop a sense of taste abound, but www.freewinecourse.com is sharper than a New World sauvignon blanc and its interactive tasting tools explain how good appreciation relies on three senses, with the eyes and nose complementing the taste buds. Here, you can log tasting notes and learn about the various grapes and the regions where they are grown.

The course looks at the main steps in assessing a wine and highlights how to judge subtle attributes that can be difficult to spot. A wine that’s low in tannin (a natural preservative found mostly in red wine), for example, has a hint of very weak tea, while highly tannic wines have the astringent qualities of an overstewed brew.

For those who prefer less structured learning, the web has swathes of video and audio by amateur and professional wine lovers. For off-the-wall, high-octane commentary and tasting notes, Gary Vaynerchuk shows how unpretentious Americans can be about wine with his video blogs. His description of wines for Thanksgiving turkey (tinyurl.com/yvfzrp ) offers suggestions for Christmas cheer.

Remember, a constant and specific temperature is essential to ensure wines are served at their best, so be sure to read the do’s and don’ts of serving at www.wine-pages.com .

WINE MATCHING

The art of matching wine to food is often portrayed as being more mysterious than alchemy, but research will minimise gastronomic gaffes. Most of us know that fish means white, and beef means red, but fish in a sauce might tolerate a light-bodied red, and some condiments throw a spanner in the works.

The website of Berry Bros & Rudd (www.bbr.com ), the vintner, has a considered section on food matching that will help you avoid some faux pas. Some foods, it says, flatten the taste buds faster than chewing lit cigarettes, and “horseradish spoils the flavour of wine”.

Many sites offer interactive wine matching software, but the matching tool from Rosemount Estate (www.rosemountestate.com.au ), the Australian producer, is one of the best. It suggests styles rather than specific wines – a chardonnay with chicken in a simple tomato sauce, for example, might make way for a merlot if the sauce is enriched with stock and bacon.

BUYING

Supermarkets offer an increasingly fine selection of wines, and at www.supermarketwine.com you will find experts recommending the best deals at your local store. However, if you want something a little more special, try a dedicated retailer such as www.laithwaites.co.uk or a club such as www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk . These sell vintages from smaller producers not always found in the big stores. And don’t forget the Wine Society (www.thewinesociety.com ), the oldest and most respected club.

For the really adventurous, the way to buy top quality wine is “en primeur”, which means it is sold while the wine is still in barrels awaiting bottling.

This is a good way of getting hold of big name wines from Bordeaux or Burgundy that are unavailable in shops. However, the downside is that you can’t be sure how good the vintage will be until long after you have parted with your money. The pitfalls and advantages of buying direct from the barrels are explored by the Winedoctor at tinyurl.com/2tvxj4 .

To buy en primeur try Majestic Wine (www.majestic.co.uk ), which has a fair range, including 12 bottles of a 2006 Beaune Domaine Bouchard for £145 and six bottles of 2006 Chateau Ausone for £3,700.

THE NEXT STEP

Many people buy wine to drink immediately, but some wines will improve if you leave them to age. The unpretentious Red Wine Review (redwinereview.me.uk ) reviews only modestly priced bottles that are widely available and suggests even these are worth maturing at home.

According to the site’s creator, Alex Hamilton: “As a general rule, red wines priced from £3 to £5 are meant to be drunk young (within six to 12 months of purchase). Wines from £6 to £10 can be kept for any time between one year and four years from the vintage.”

As a collection grows, keeping a cellar becomes more complicated – you don’t want a case of Pétrus going past its prime because it was hidden away behind a box of cheap Australian shiraz. With sites such as CellarTracker! (www.cellartracker.com ) you can log all your bottles, with suggested drinking dates and tasting notes.

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