Wine is an excellent thing. After a typical day – school runs, a supermarket trolley-dash and possibly a conference call in which I try not to let on that I have a 3-foot-tall Power Ranger standing before me – I don’t have the mental capacity for much beyond a glass of wine and easy conversation. Something delicious to kick the taste buds does more for me than Berocca ever could. But before we go any further, I must address the issue of frazzled mums collapsing on the sofa, glass in hand. Hands up, that’s me. But I am a normal person who likes a glass of wine. I’m not guzzling the bottle. They say women should know their limits. Well, I know mine. It’s fourteen units a week. Sometimes I drink less than that, sometimes a bit more, but generally wine is part of everyday (or rather night) life in this house, usually served with food and chat, depending on how worn out we are, or with an episode of Masterchef/Bake-Off (delete as appropriate). Mothers of old drank gin when pregnant and blew smoke in the other direction when holding a baby. We’ve come a long way since then and shouldn’t be made to feel guilty just because we love a glass of wine at the end of the day. Motherhood already comes with a side order of guilt, and so, on behalf of all of us who drink responsibly, I’m sending that particular side order back. This book is about helping you to understand more about wine so that, seeing as you are probably drinking less than you used to, you make each glass count and drink better. Now, any given day with small children generally involves tears, laughter and endless trips to the loo. And that’s just me. The point is, motherhood is a joy but it is also completely exhausting. Along with the sheer pleasure and wonder our children bring us on a daily basis (don’t they?), we are also faced with the slightly less joyful tasks of endless piles of washing to sort out, running a canteen and taxi service, wiping noses and bottoms and kitchen tables whilst picking up random bits of plastic as we go. Motherhood ain’t no place for sissies, as they say. It is chaotic, messy and very, very noisy. But when the day is done, and the children are put to bed with clean faces and full tummies, I love the quiet that descends. Like a blanket, it gently tucks itself over the house. (I’d love to say this happens by 7.30p.m. every night, but what with the endless faffing of last-minute loo trips and missing teddies it’s usually later than that.) Anyway, when it does finally happen, the quiet is restorative. It’s grown-up time, and a glass of wine marks the split between the rest of our day and the time we have to ourselves in the evening. I don’t have a glass of wine every evening, but more often than not I do. And if I’m going to have a glass of wine I want it to be one worth drinking, not something that is instantly forgettable. Buying the same on-offer Pinot Grigio week in, week out, might give us the bargain-hit we crave, but it doesn’t give us a thrill on the tongue. I’d rather open a better-than-average bottle during the week and make it last longer than have a cheap wine I ‘don’t mind’ drinking. HOW MUCH DO YOU NEED TO SPEND? The wines in my fridge door and in the rack change every week. In the old days, when I worked for a big supermarket as a wine buyer, I had to taste at least forty wines a day to make sure everything was as it should do. I know, tough, huh? Brilliantly, this meant that I rarely had to buy wine with my own money; I just took it home from the office (with permission – I didn’t steal it, I hasten to add). Not having that luxury now, I have become an expert at shopping around, finding good deals and avoiding bad ones (sadly, some really are too good to be true – more on that later). Now that it’s our own hard-earned cash I’m parting with, I’m generally far fussier. It had better be good. Having said that, we’re feeding and clothing more people than we used to in this house, so money is very much an object. If you spend £5 on a bottle of wine, more than half of that cost accounts for the duty and tax, leaving you with not much to spend on the actual wine, not even 50p in fact (after shipping and the retail mark-up). When you think how much you might spend nowadays on a cup of coffee or some emergency chocolate, 50p seems cheap by comparison. It follows that as the cost of the bottle rises, so does the quality of the wine. This is not always the case, but generally it’s true. Once you get to £7 you are getting more than double the value in actual wine compared with that £5 bottle (I know!). Spend £10 and it doubles again. Spend £20 and half the cost accounts for the actual wine. Beyond £20 and you are buying something that is probably in limited supply and is priced by desire. Obviously, only you know how much you are willing to spend and if that wine is worth it to you. I generally shop for wine costing between £6 and £15, depending on what the wine is for and what my budget is. When it comes to selecting our fridge-door whites and in-the-rack reds, these are wines we’re likely to drink at home during the week, rather than wines we might bring out when eating with friends or family at the weekend (which we’ll come to later). I really want to inspire you to try new wines and break out of your comfort zone. This is about how to have wines on hand that are a delight to drink, not just something that is drunk and forgotten. Given that all wine starts the same way, as a grape on the vine, we need to explore what makes wines taste so very different. That way you can start to navigate your way around, allowing you to find the good stuff and avoid the bad. So don your metaphorical lab coat and geek specs; it’s time to look at what’s inside the bottle. WHAT’S IN A WINE? Grapes: whoever thought so much joy could come from such a small but perfectly formed fruit? Each grape just hangs out on the vine until ripe, ready to be picked and popped into our mouths – unless they are picked to make wine, which is obviously much more fun. Grapes are made up largely of water. It’s all the other stuff in there that makes the grape great for wine. There are natural sugars; there are flavours that vary depending on the variety; and there is natural acidity. Another ingredient delivered with that little package is tannin. WHAT IS TANNIN? Tannin is one of the ingredients – a polyphenolic compound, to give it its proper definition – that makes up a grape. They are found on the skins, stalks and seeds of a grape, and how tannins are managed during the winemaking process has a very big influence on the resulting wine. If you are wondering what I mean by tannin, think of the feeling you get in your mouth when you take a sip of that cup of tea you made, the one where you got distracted by something or someone (probably small), and by the time you got back to your tea the teabag/tea leaves had been in for a bit too long, leaving it stewed and lukewarm. The relevant thing to remember is the bitter, astringent character of that fated cuppa. I realize I’m not selling tannin well here, but in wine it plays a crucial role as it preserves the wine, enabling it to age well. When making red wine, the skins of the grapes are left in contact with the clear (almost always clear, no matter what the colour of the grape is) juice so that colour (aka anthocyanins) and tannins can be extracted. Generally, the thicker the skin of the grape, the more colour and tannin it will give to the grape juice. Tannins come in different guises: ‘big’ tannins are often found in wines that are big in every other way, especially fruit and alcohol, such as New World Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz, and Malbec from Argentina. ‘Firm’ is a word often used to describe a wine where the tannins are very obvious, perhaps even a little harsh, as is sometimes found in very young wines. ‘Soft’ tannins are found in wines made from grapes with thinner skins, such as Gamay, Merlot or Pinot Noir, so the resulting tannins are lighter than their thick-skinned friends. The best way to understand the difference tannins make to a wine is to try a ‘big’ tannin wine next to a ‘soft’ tannin wine; take a French Pinot Noir and taste it next to an Australian Shiraz. Be sure to taste the Pinot Noir first, then the Shiraz. Note how different the wine feels in weight. Obviously there are loads of other differences to take into account, such as the fruit characters, how much alcohol they have or whether they have been aged in oak barrels (since these also add tannin to a wine) but the ‘feel’ of the tannins will be incredibly different. The essential ingredient is, of course, alcohol. Alcohol isn’t in a grape when picked, but when nature’s party trick happens, otherwise known as fermentation, yeasts convert the natural sugars in the grape to alcohol. That’s some party trick. Mine’s fitting my fist in my mouth; not that impressive by comparison, granted. Oak, or rather the flavour of oak, is another ingredient that might be found in a wine. If a wine is aged in oak barrels, flavours and tannins from the oak will shape the wine over time. Oak is often wine’s walking stick, allowing it to age gracefully and keeping it standing much longer than it otherwise would. So there we go. Water, sugar, flavours, acidity, tannin, alcohol and sometimes oak are what’s in a wine. We’ll explore all of these things in more detail as we go, but for now, that’s a good place to start. WHERE IN THE WORLD? Billions of bottles of wine are made around the world every year and they are often categorized as being either from the Old World (meaning, generally speaking, wines from European countries) or from the New World (meaning wines from everywhere else, including Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina and South Africa). Someone once described the difference in terms of style: Old World for more subtle wines, New World for more robust, fruity wines. Whilst partly true, as a wine buyer I’d meet French winemakers in Chile, Chilean winemakers in New Zealand and Australian winemakers in France. Actually, the most obvious difference between the Old World and New World is one you can see rather than taste. It’s the way the wines are labelled. Historically, wines from France, Spain, Italy and other European countries have labelled their wines depending on place rather than grape, giving top billing on the front labels to the place where the grapes are grown rather than the grape variety. For example, Rioja, Chablis and Gavi are all places; they are wine-producing regions. If you take a look at a wine from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile or Argentina, you’ll find the name of the grape variety writ large on the front label. So it helps if you know your grape varieties and your places. However, there are thousands of different grape varieties and wine regions all over the world. I don’t plan to tell you about all of them, but I do want to teach you how to navigate the world wine map with your very own built-in satnav. Here in the UK, even though vineyard plantings are on the increase, we don’t produce very much wine (yet), certainly not enough to go around, so we’ve always been fairly relaxed about drinking wine from elsewhere in the world. That, and a plethora of places to buy wine – led by supermarkets – has given us choice. Arguably, we’ve had too much choice, leaving us cowering before a great wall of wine, wishing for a sign to point us in the right direction. Unfortunately, help is not always at hand and we’re left to go on label, and previous experience, alone. In which case, it’s good to know how to decode a label. Overleaf is what to look for when you pick up a bottle of wine: GETTING STARTED The selection of fridge-door whites and in-the-rack reds is based on what I’ve recently found and loved when that night-time blanket descends. The wines here are likely to be poured before food is on the table in the case of the whites, but drunk with food in the case of the reds. The rosé is for when it’s warm enough to sit outside once the children are in bed, with a small bowl of something to nibble at in front of me. What I would like you to do is write down the country and grape for each wine, take the list to your local shop, whether that’s a supermarket, a wine specialist, or an online retailer, and search for some of these wines (look! You’re doing homework already – grown-up homework). See what you find. If you can’t find the grape listed below, try a different grape or something from another region in the same country at a similar price. Forget the school run; this is the wine run. It’s more fun (and there’s less shouting). DEAL OR NO DEAL? Apparently more than two-thirds of all booze in the UK is bought when it’s on offer. I was quite surprised by this. Until I thought about it, that is. I love a bargain. I can’t remember the last time I bought baby wipes that weren’t on a three-for-two offer. Crisps on buy-one-get-one-free? Chuck ’em in. Washing powder, bags of apples, packs of mince, tins of tuna . . . Extra points? Lovely. You know the deal. When it comes to wine, I’ll check out the offers before looking at the rest of the wine aisle. The problem is, the choice of wines on offer gets a bit samey, so I urge you to move on from the bargains if you’ve tried the wines before. If you’re in the supermarket, look at the labels, scan for the country, place, grape variety and vintage, read the story on the back label. I know this means slowing down the trolley-dash just a bit, but it’s time well spent. Unless you have a small child pulling at your arm, or shouting that they need a wee NOW, in which case all bets are off. Leave it until next time. Supermarkets aren’t known for providing readily available wine experts in the wine aisle, but some are definitely putting more time and effort into doing this. However, it’s more likely it will just be you and at least 500 labels to look at, with a few bits of information scattered around on the shelves. This is when you need your wine satnav to kick in (which you’ll have by the end of the book). If, however, you are in a specialist wine shop, then ask the person behind the counter what they recommend. Ask them if they have tried it themselves – they probably will have. The people in specialist wine shops, or local independent wine shops are usually abnormally obsessive about wine, so give them an opportunity to help you explore their range and see what happens. The last time I did that in my local wine shop, I left with an Italian red made from a grape I’d never tried (or even heard of) and it was utterly delicious. It is worth asking if you can try it before you buy – you never know, they might be happy to open a bottle if they think others might want to try it. I’ve given you a price as a guide, but you may have to spend a bit more or a bit less, depending on where you shop. The idea behind this exercise is to give you a starting point and to get you thinking about wine and being open to trying new things. Think of it as encouraging your defiant child to try something new. Remember all those times you have begged, pleaded with them just to taste it. Is there anything more soul-destroying than tipping a plate of uneaten freshly made food into the bin after an emotional teatime? Just as they have the power to make you feel happy when they discover a new taste and go on to wolf it down, so you can make me happy by trying something new. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. But you need to try it – perhaps a few times – before saying no. Off you go. As mentioned, there are thousands of grape varieties grown all over the world. We’ve started with just a few, but I’m thinking tortoise and hare. We’re in it for the long run. Once you’ve got a couple of these wines in, you need to taste them. I mean, really give them a good going over as in swirling and swishing. We obviously have to address the issue of spitting versus swallowing (no sniggering at the back, please). A good, clean aim is essential when it comes to professional wine tasting and spitting the wine into a spittoon. Eldest Boy thinks it’s hilarious that in my job as a ‘wine lady’ I have to spit when everyone knows spitting is rude. And there’s also a no aftershave/perfume/hairspray rule (unwritten) at professional wine tastings, which is probably why I absolutely drench myself Jilly Cooper-heroine-like in perfume when I’m not working and on a night out, even if it’s only a parents’ evening. However, we’re not doing this professionally, so spitting is optional. Seriously, though, there is an art to tasting wine and we’ll look at how to do it properly in the next chapter. 10 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT WINE (AND WANT TO SHARE WITH YOU) New Zealand Pinot Noir is usually divine. Cheap South African red usually isn’t. Champagne with a bit of age is much more interesting than young stuff. Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon from the Colchagua region tastes a bit like chocolate. The Nebbiolo grape (of Barolo fame) is an awkward bugger but I still love it. English wines, especially sparkling ones, are getting better with every (good) vintage. We all need to drink more Vermentino. Top-end Burgundy is to die for, really. I thought I always preferred Old World Sauvignon Blanc to New World Sauvignon Blanc, but I was wrong. Left-field is good: Austrian Grüner Veltliner, southern Italian reds, under-the-radar Languedoc regions . . .