It may be sunny as you read these words. It may be grey. As long as it isn’t raining, a number of people will be playing tennis matches on grass courts somewhere in south-west London. You might be planning to watch them do that, on television, or even in SW19.

For thousands of years we have survived without swine. But there seems to be a growing fascination with the pig’s forbidden fruits — in the United States that is.

Could we soon be asking for a nice glass of malvasia? It would not be the first time a beautiful and distinctive grape has put a whole new country on the wine map.

It is probably fair to say that if most men were to summon up their dream woman, Stasha Palos would not be far from the fantasy. She is tall, blonde, slim, charming and creative.

Georgia, nestling on the Black Sea’s south-eastern shore and blessed with a Mediterranean climate, is home to some of the world’s finest organic produce as well as original food traditions. The cuisine is one of the most exciting you can find, still pervaded by the influence of one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities.

The headline “Israel wins plaudits and acclaim in international forum” seems strange in today’s political climate. But the forum was not the United Nations Human Rights Council, but the prestigious international Vinitaly and Decanter magazine awards.

I have a love-hate relationship with champagne. I love drinking it, but hate paying for it — or at least paying for what I most achingly long to drink. Pol Roger’s Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill costs £112.35 at Berry Bros & Rudd (www.bbr.com) and is by no means the most expensive in my personal pantheon.

‘But you’re a Jew — you’ll never survive in the country!” That was the reaction when Joanna Weinberg mentioned to an acquaintance that she was off to live in deepest Somerset with her family, husband Ed and children, May aged four and two-year-old Billy.