Oxford has been revealed as having some of the top tipplers in the country, with people forking out well over the national average every week for bottles of their favourite plonk.

Folk in the city would seem to know their Soave from their Chablis, with the average family spending £3.80 on wine compared to just £3.10 in the rest of the UK, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Assistant manager of the Majestic Wine Warehouse in Oxford's Cowley Road, Jon Terry, said in his experience the figures seemed to make sense. His customers were a knowledgeable crowd when it came to choosing wine. "Our customers are a well-educated bunch on their wine," he said. "The majority know exactly what they want and know what they are talking about.

"Some of them know their stuff so well that you often end up taking lessons from them."

He added: "Because we sell wine by the case, most of our customers spend around £100, but to individual customers we usually sell wine upwards of £5, which is probably a little more than people spend in our other stores across the country.

"We also sell a lot of wine to the colleges and as they tend to take the cheaper drinking wine and stuff that's on special offer, so that evens things out a little." So what sort of wine do the people of Oxford spend their hard-earned cash on?

Mr Terry said: "We sell a lot of New World wines compared to other stores, especially wines from Australia and Chile, which is an up and coming market."

Story date: Monday 12 April

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