IF last week’s column drew comparisons between Virgin’s wine tasting day and an “upmarket beer festival”, then this week’s column can go the whole hog.

Because, you see, we only went and popped down to the wonderful York Beer Festival on Knavesmire where among the millions of different beers on offer is a stall selling various wines.

But we’re not just talking pub favourites Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pino Grigio (white and rose), Malbec and Merlot, which are there to keep happy anyone who isn’t too keen on ale but wants to go along for the atmosphere.

No, we’re talking English wines and some made very close to home, too, just outside York no less.

And we’re not talking only grape wines either.

Nope, here we have the whole range of various ye olde English country favourites – the likes of gooseberry, cherry, blackberry, elderflower and surely a Yorkshire classic, rhubarb. Yes, rhubarb wine.

Now, it is hard to draw comparisons between these wines and “normal” wine – they just don’t taste anything like the same, so my advice is simply to try them yourself.

Some are a bit gimmicky – not many people will buy a bottle of rhubarb wine every week or indeed try to pair it with food. (It would surely be crumble if you did.) But they did seem to sell well here, with organisers insisting they had no trouble shifting them throughout the festival. On which note, they are all priced £2.50, £3.50 and £5 for 125ml, 175ml and 25ml respectively, or £15 a bottle.

There is of course a somewhat stereotypical fit between ale and English country wine – just think beards, corduroy and the Good Life, with Barbara offering Penelope Keith a bottle of alcoholic elderberry juice and Tom, with patches on his elbows, making his own ginger beer in the shed. But then we don’t think much to stereotypes here.

Folk of all ages, gender, dress and job title used the wine counter when we were there, and they all spoke positively of the tipples they were buying, both the grape variety and the other.

Much of the grape ones come from the Smiths of Westow – the 10.5% very-easy-to-drink white called Yorkshire’s Lass was our favourite – while most of the country wines come from the Ironsides winery at Stockton-on-the-Forest.

There was also a sloe wine (like sloe gin without the gin) and a cracking (if drank in small doses) ginger wine from Lyme Bay Winery in Devon.

If you’re there today, then maybe give them a go.