(TheGuardian) - Wine bars have been undergoing a bit of a renaissance over the past few years. And that’s great. Wine is good. It improves most places – we like it in bars, in restaurants, in cinemas, on sofas, on trains: all the ways. Jokes are funnier on wine. People are more attractive. Basically, drinking wine is fun. But there is a limit to where it’s fun to drink wine. And that limit, I suggest, is Starbucks.

It’s not the only chain that has decided to get in on some of that sweet night-time drinking money. Waitrose now has its own range of in-store wine bars, allowing imagination-free drinkers from Horsham to King’s Cross to sip £5 glasses of prosecco mere metres away from aisles filled with bleach and dried pasta. Pret is nearly six months into an attempt to rebrand itself as a pre-theatre restaurant by chucking £16 bottles of merlot on to its menu and having one its sandwich preparers stand at the door like a make-believe maître d’. But enough is enough. Last week, Starbucks launched a “Star Reserve” branch in London, which accentuates its £6 cups of coffee with a 10-strong wine list that – according to the press blurb – is part of a “multi-sensory” experience. Which sounds pretty classy. Until you realise that the same description applies to listening to Maroon 5 in a damp, smelly room.

Listen, Starbucks: writing the names of four kinds of red wine on a card and serving overpriced dips won’t start us yelling, “Sod the restaurant! Let’s eat dinner in that place that does the shitty watery coffee!”Imagine a friend catching you slugging plonk next to a powered-down Pret sandwich chiller. You may as well bulk print T-shirts that say: “PITY ME! I HAVE NO IMAGINATION!”