(DailyMail) - British people are keen wine-drinkers, getting through an impressive 1.6 billion bottles of wine every year.

However it appears that while we are happy slurping, swilling and sipping, we are far from experts on what we're actually drinking.

In fact, more than two-thirds of us admit to bluffing when it comes to choosing wine.

A survey commissioned by the Wine and Spirit Education Trust revealed that 70 per cent of British drinkers are selecting a bottle of white or red without really knowing what they're doing.

Its researches found three-quarters of women drinkers and two-thirds of male drinkers were 'not confident' in their knowledge of wine.

Possibly unsurprisingly, men also admitted to being more likely to bluff than women, pretending to know more than they actually do.

This could be related to the fact that nearly one in six women said that they considered knowledge about wine to be an attractive trait in a potential partner.

While avoiding the cheapest wine on the list in a restaurant might seem as if you know something about wine - you have been rumbled. One in five of us use the trick of ordering the second-cheapest wine on the menu in an attempt to seem more informed.

Across the country, Londoners were found to be the most confident overall (37 per cent) but ironically were also the greatest bluffers about of wine (19 per cent).

At the other end of the spectrum, drinkers in the East Midlands are the least confident, with a significant four out of five (82 per cent) drinkers admitting to their lack of confidence in their wine knowledge.