In the UK, the market is dominated by the Madeira Wine Company (chief brand: Blandy’s) and Henriques & Henriques. Between them, you should find everything you need to cover the Valentinian bases: an ap?tif and a sweetie.For ap?tifs you will need Sercial or Verdelho. Though its piercing dryness is not to everyone’s taste, Sercial is a personal favourite. Verdelho, more medium-dryish, might be better unless you’ve already acquired the taste.Malmsey is the sweetest of the four, with Bual coming in close behind. For my palate, Bual usually delivers the perfect level of sweetness But note: all Madeira has generous levels of acidity. When you’re drinking even the sweetest, you don’t think: “This is a sweet wine.” You think: “I am in Heaven.” The flavours are caramelly, nutty, mellow citrus peel, dried fruits of every description They are unforgettable.

And because of all that acidity, and the oxidation, they keep forever even once opened.So, which is the perfect Valentine’s Madeira? A Bual or Malmsey that, like all the best Madeira, has spent a good, long spell in barrels. The better producers have started releasing vintage-denominated wines, but the best are expensive and rare. My first choice among lower-priced and widely available wines would be Henriques & Henriques’s 15-year-old Bual. Blandy’s 10- and 15-year-old Malmsey, and the Henriques & Henriques 10-year- old Bual, would be joint runners-up. The younger wines cost around £16 for 75cl bottles, the older around £26; but the companies have started bottling in 50cl sizes which are obviously cheaper (and a good size to boot). Sound expensive? You can get mediocre pink Champagne for the price of a bottle of Henriques & Henriques 15-year-old Bual, which is a truly great wine.These wines are found mostly at independent merchants, but for stockists you can ring Henriques & Henriques’s agent HwCg (tel: 01279 873 500) or, for MWC importers, John E Fells (tel: 01442 289 324) Let them be your guides to liquid delights. Madeira truly is the drink of love, whatever the V-day industry may tell you..

Don’t you just love February? OK, so it’s cold, dark, rainy and you’ve probably forgotten what sunshine feels like. But there are some things that make winter worthwhile, and a bowl of freshly made soup is currently high up on my wish list. Any home-cook will tell you that nothing compares to soup you’ve made yourself, but there’s one trend you can’t ignore – soup bars. Five years ago some friends told him about soup bars that were opening in Manhattan. “I went with my brother Tom to take a look, and we were pretty confident we could do something similar in London,” he says “Confident” is an understatement.

On their return, the brothers sold their houses to raise £400,000, bought the lease of a burger bar near Old Street Tube station. For a year, they lived on-site, carrying out the bulk of the renovations themselves. “We worked 18-hour days, sometimes through the night, and at weekends.” A builder friend oversaw the work, but they only called in the professional shop fitters to put in the counter.When they opened, in May 2001, they didn’t achieve the success they expected They went further “There were queues out the door. I’d look at these people and think, ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ So we had to close for another two months so we could deal with that capacity.” Ben and Tom now serve 1,000 people a day, up from 600 this time last year.Needless to say, the brothers now have expansion plans. Who’d bet against them soon having an empire built on soup? But then, soup has risen to a higher plane than was imaginable during the pre-war days of Brown Windsor, as served at almost every hotel in Britain. Soup-making skills were lost to a generation of Brits who grew up on tinned cream of tomato Then tins were out and cartons and tubs were in.