From prosecco to private jets: 50 years on the good stuff at The Sunday Times Wine Club

Corley Welcome Break services just off the M6 near Coventry is the last place you would look for the first stirrings of a revolution in the way we eat and drink — especially in the 1970s. The most exciting dish it offered then was the Bender Meaty Frankfurter with a cup of tea at Wimpy. But on the afternoon of July 16, 1972, Tony Laithwaite pulled off the motorway on his way back to Windsor after visiting his parents in the Lake District. What happened next changed Britain’s drinking habits for good.

Laithwaite bought a copy of The Sunday Times and saw his name in the letters page. He had written to praise the newspaper’s exposé of unscrupulous UK bottlers who were buying vin that