Our London wine shop at No. 3 St James's Street has changed little since it was opened by the Widow Bourne in 1698. It boasts an extensive range of wines and spirits, from around £5 up to £5,000, and a team of knowledgeable yet friendly staff who offer unparalleled expert advice, no matter what your requirements are. The range incorporates a vast selection of wines, including those from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Spain and the Rhône, as well as top Italian bottles and New World classics.From roots as a merchant selling provisions, exotic spices, tea and coffee, No.3 ultimately became a fine wine merchant and during the past three centuries many famous visitors have passed through our doors, from Lord Byron to the Aga Khan. The shop is little changed and traces of its history – including important documents and artefacts – are on view. Berry Bros. & Rudd first supplied wine to the British Royal Family during the rein of King George III and has continued to do so to the present day and currently holds two Royal warrants;

for H.M. The Queen and H.R.H The Prince of Wales. Step back in time and learn more about the rich history of No.3, through tales of widows, kings, politicians and coffee. Find out more about any events that are happening in the our London shop over the next few months. Browse our finest reserves room, offering a superlative selection of some of the world’s finest wines. Take a look around our fine Whiskies and Spirits room, featuring rare and independent releases and free tastings of the exclusive range of our own bottlings.best white wine with cakeWe now take it for granted. best online wine and spiritsPerhaps, after WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, we're even a little scared of it. best wine box uk 2015

But just occasionally it's still possible to get a surge of childish, innocent joy from the internet. I had one of these moments recently in a restaurant out in the sticks in Roussillon, in the south of France. I'd discovered and loved a local wine – Domaine Madeloc's Tremadoc white from Collioure – that I couldn't remember seeing in the UK. I'm aware this rather mundane and modest feat of problem-solving would come some way down most people's list of amazing things the web can do. best wines under 10 bcBut when I think about what used to happen when I found a wine in a restaurant, or on holiday, and wanted to buy a bottle to drink back home – the scrawled note on a napkin, the dispiriting, often fruitless, JR Hartley-like ring around possible merchants – it's enough to bring out the cyber-utopian in me.good cheap wine for pizza

or the recently launched, more supermarket-focused bringabottle.co.uk – cheaper. It's the giddy feeling of choice that comes from having access to the entire range of pretty much every retailer in the country at your fingertips (supermarkets, indies, mail-order specialists, high-street specialists, even a growing number of producers selling their wares direct). Given the benefits, then, I'm a little surprised that more of us don't buy online. red wine case for iphone 5According to research released at the end of last year by market researcher Wine Intelligence, the market for online wine is rapidly expanding – £800m of wine was bought online last year, compared with £150m in 2005. But that still only accounts for just over one in 10 of all the bottles sold in the UK, and only a quarter of regular wine drinkers have bought online. I'd like to think any residual reluctance is down to a touching need for face-to-face contact, but the real reason, according to Wine Intelligence, is probably more prosaic: you have to buy by the case at most online merchants, and most of us are wary of doing that.

We would rather have our wine expenses hidden – a fiver here, a tenner there – than confront the price of 12 bottles bought at once. Rather depressingly, the Wine Intelligence research also suggested we are no more adventurous online than we are in the real world: we may spend a little more, but a supermarket, Tesco (with 28% of the market), has the country's most popular online wine site. And while Tesco, Waitrose, M&S, Asda and Morrisons all have bigger, more interesting ranges online than they do in stores, they still choose their wine with less flair than most specialists. In any case, since the most compelling reason to buy from a supermarket (you're already shopping for food so may as well add a bottle to the trolley) doesn't apply online, it makes sense to try somewhere different. Of the slickly marketed online-only specialists, I have friends who swear by the user-friendly sites, preference-based recommendation and customer service of Virgin and Laithwaites, as well as the inclusive, quasi-charitable, small producer-supporting Naked Wines.

But their ranges only occasionally hit the heights for me: in my experience, a more diverse, reliable and – once you've paid the one-off £40 life membership fee – better value online service is offered by The Wine Society. It's also worth remembering that most local merchants rely on the web for much of their custom, and most deliver nationwide for a small fee (or free if your order goes over £100). Berry Bros & Rudd has the most impressive website, but the likes of Tanners Wines, Lea and Sandeman, Cambridge Wine, Oxford Wine, Noel Young Wines, The Secret Cellar, Wood Winters and Yapp Brothers, to pick out a slightly random geographical spread of favourites, are all stocked with wondrous bottles as well as offering a more personal touch if your mastery of technology extends no further than the telephone. Heartland Stickleback Red, South Australia, 2009(£10.49, Marks and Spencer)Like most supermarkets, M&S has been trying to draw punters to its website with online-only wines, such as this sumptuous but not overbearing red-fruited blend by Ben Glaetzer, which has a cherryish charge from mixing the Italian varieties dolcetto and lagrien with the more usual cabernet and shiraz.

La Jara Zero Assoluto Prosecco NV(£12.99, Champagne Warehouse)Single-region – or in this case single-style – specialists have flourished online, and Champagne Warehouse has carved out a niche with its range of well-priced small-producer fizz. This superbly pure, properly dry prosecco from one of the best producers in the north-eastern Italian region is bracingly fresh and tangy but graceful in texture. Domaine Les Grands Bois Trois Soeurs Viognier 2012(£9.95, Vineyards Direct)This terrific value, peachy, honeysuckle-inflected white Rhône from a reliable but not stellar name is typical of the small but well-chosen and unpretentious range at fromvineyardsdirect, which is simply – and ingeniously – presented online like the list at your favourite local French restaurant. )The internet has made it much easier for a number of enterprising wine producers to sell their wines direct, including ex-Laithwaites wine director Justin Howard-Sneyd, whose brooding, voluminous, evocative and silky southern French red from old grenache and carignan vines shows he understands winemaking as well as wine-selling.