Torres moves into the 21st century

It was encountering a load of bottles with little black bulls swinging from their necks while wandering round a very ordinary supermarket in the suburbs of Milan that reminded me just how efficient is the distribution of the wines of Torres, Spain's most famous producer of table wines. The firm, founded in 1870 on the back of a surprisingly successful investment in a Cuban oil company, shot to international fame a quarter of a century ago when the 1970 Torres Gran Coronas Black Label Cabernet 'beat' some great Bordeaux grands crus at the much-vaunted Gault-Millau wine olympics in Paris.