Queen gives her guests £5 New World wines

Spend £5 on a bottle of New World wine and you’ll be in right royal company, as it’s been disclosed that the Queen does just that for serving to guests at Palace receptions. According to The Daily Telegraph, which was privileged to have a tour of Buckingham Palace’s wine cellars, if it’s not non-vintage bubbly on these occasions, then the Queen mainly offers wines from the New World, some of which cost only a fiver. South African chardonnays and New Zealand’s Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc are particularly popular whites.

When it comes to lunches, however, the Old World is favoured, with French wines being the order of the day. Old World wines are the winners for dinners too and are followed by dessert wine or vintage champagne.

The contents of the Queen’s cellars are reputedly worth £2 million, says the Telegraph, and in 2005 to 2006 she spent £400,000 restocking them. However, the amount varies depending on whether it is a good vintage. Certainly, she buys much of her wine en primeur, often 20 years before it is due to be drunk. That way she can do it more economically in order to annually entertain some 20,000 guests at these types of events.

And does English wine have a space in the racks of Buckingham Palace’s 300-year-old vaults? Yes, Nyetimber is there for events that call for a bit of patriotism.