(TheGuardian) - Domaine Alain Chavy Les Chenes 2011 is a rather good, oak-influenced dry white from one of France’s most celebrated regions, Chassagne-Montrachet in Burgundy. According to Oddbins, , its “elegant palate of crisp citrus, white flower, hints of honey and stony minerality” would make a fine match for “seared scallops with tarragon butter”. To make the combination really soar, Oddbins’ website makes another proposition: why not try serving Les Chenes and the scallops with a blast of Simple Minds’ bombastic 1980s pop-rock anthem Don’t You (Forget About Me)?

What makes the track work with this particular wine isn’t explained. Does it have some specific quality, a certain tinny-ness of synthesizer, or a windy earnestness of vocal, that suits the chardonnays of Chassagne-Montrachet? Or had the Oddbins copywriter run out of ideas, exhausted after finding musical matches for each of the hundreds of wines on the website, from Paul Simon’s Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes for a dense Puglian Primitivo to anything by Elgar for Pol Roger champagne?

To be fair to Oddbins, you get the impression that their approach to wine-music matching, while comprehensive, isn’t intended as anything other than a bit of fun: one wine, Château Haut Courneau from Bordeaux, is “paired” with The Hokey Cokey. But they’re not alone in attempting to make the link between these two sensory experiences more explicit. Many writers, bloggers and merchants have begun to match music and wine, whether it’s my predecessor,Tim Atkin, proposing Mexican guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela with Zucchardi tempranillo from Argentina’s Uco Valley, or the American master sommelier and blogger Daniel Levin suggesting bottles to enjoy with some of Prince’s greatest hits within hours of the announcement of his death (including another Argentine red, Achaval-Ferrer Mendoza Malbec, which “with its purple flowers” among other qualities, is made for Purple Rain).