Red Red Wine

When I socialise, my drink of choice is quite often a glass of red wine. Wines can vary in quality so it’s important you do some homework to know what to look out for and what to avoid - a poor quality wine can leave a nasty aftertaste, dehydrate you and, if you drink enough of it, give you a nasty headache the morning after.

Ever since my first glass of decent red wine, I have been fascinated in just how much wines can vary in colour, texture and taste. My fascination quickly developed into a hobby where I researched the whole production cycle from planting the grapes right through to the bottling process.

One of my favourite wine growing countries is France and, in particular, the Bordeaux and Medoc regions, so when I visited France last year I made sure to include a number of vineyard tours. Maybe I was lucky, or maybe all chateaus are the same, but I was immediately struck by just how passionate the chateau owners, and their staff, were about creating the best quality wine possible and just how complex that can be.

My time in France coincided with grape harvesting season and, now that I’ve experienced the whole ‘start to finish’ process for myself, I’ve fallen in love with red wine even more and can’t wait to visit more vineyards in the future.

For anyone who is a fan of the band UB40, one of their biggest hits had it spot on for me in their lyrics; “Red red wine, you make me feel so fine…….”.