Alcohol: the cause of, and the solution to, all of life's problems.

I can't claim credit for that splendid axiom - it was, as these things so often are, coined on the Simpsons. But boy am I feeling its rub right now.

I am just returned from a honeymoon in Italy to find London in turmoil and my own finances, post-wedding, looking a little Lehman Brothers-esque. Now comes the pinch, a new winter of discontent.

But whilst I was in Italy, staying on a vineyard, naturally enough, I picked up an expensive habit: Chianti Classico. Oh, and Vino Nobile. Anything, really, as long as Hugh Johnson says it's worth a try and it's not Pinot Grigio.

In short, I have become that most insufferable and ruinous of philes: an oeno.

Now, part of me reasons that this is a becoming interest for a married man, a logical extension of an interest in cooking. It is a satisfying thing to be able to penetrate a restuarant wine list, to pronounce the word Gewurztraminer properly and to escape from Oddbins with your ego intact.

But it is also the only passing hobby I have had where I find I like myself a little less the more I learn, where the more I learn, the more likely I am to ruin myself.

There was the moment at the annual Chianti fare in Italy, where bored of tasting, my wife repaired to a café to read a book and I continued to stagger from stall to stall like the guy from Sideways. "Are you here alone?" asked some fellow wine-tasters between slurps of the 2001 at one stand. Erm no, my wife of two weeks is over the square, drinking mineral water while I cavort like Keith Floyd's bastard grandson over here. It just doesn't look good.

There was also a tasting back in London last Friday organised by Jascots (www.jascots.co.uk), a fine independent merchants in west London. Initially, you have the feeling of a kid in a sweetshop - my friend Jack and I dashed to the German stand and began to discuss the underrated delights of Riesling. Then you're comparing Malbecs; lamenting the prices of Burgundy; ejecting South African Pinotage where it belongs: the spitoon. It's delightful, of course, about the best way to spend an evening I can think of.

But where does it leave you? With a stonking hangover on Saturday morning. With snobbish reflexes and unfulfillable expectations of pub wine lists. And wondering whether a rich buff really gets more fun out of Chateau Mouton Rothschild than a Wag does from Blossom Hill.

Oh well. I console myself that, for a credit crunch night in, a DVD and a bottle of Barolo are still a lot less than a crap meal out. I am intrigued that the trade in fine wines still seems immune from the credit crunch. But I am relieved that my taste in beer remains proletarian.