Daily Mirror

THE WINE EXPERT: This £100 Italian red is smoky on the palate with hints of plums and vanilla to explore

THE BITTER DRINKER: It's like an old settee.. one that's been dumped in the rain and got wet and smelly

AS RICHARD AND JUDY LAUNCH TV WINE CLUB, WE TEST TOP BOTTLES ON REGULARS AT AN ORDINARY PUB

The Mirror 20/10/2004, Claire Donnelly

Flashing me a toothless smile, bricklayer Billy Jackson slowly drains the last of his sumptuous wine. He thinks for a minute, then coughs, splutters and tells me just what he makes of the £100-a- bottle Italian red.

"It's awful," he says, lighting up a fag in disgust. "Bloody awful. "If someone served me this in a pub I'd complain - I'd send it back and ask for a top on it." When I tell Billy, a diehard bitter drinker, how much the bottle of 2000 Sassicaia costs he looks at me as if I'm mad. "£100?" he says, shaking his head. "I wouldn't pay £100 for that - I wouldn't pay £2 for it." Heading back to the bar, he adds: "If that's the best you can do I'm sticking to bitter."

Pub landlady Karen Taylor, 29, is just as shocked. "How much?" she says. "I actually wouldn't drink that. It's definitely been corked or left out somewhere - it tastes like it's gone bad."

Billy and Karen may not be impressed by the world of wines out there, but the latest sales figures suggest many of us are. Where once we had the odd glass at weddings or Christmas, each Briton now knocks back two bottles of wine a month, spending an astonishing £6billion a year between us.

It is now so popular that Richard and Judy are preparing to launch a wine club as part of their Channel 4 show. Their easy- to-follow guides and on-screen discussions aim to make connoisseurs of us all. Forget Blue Nun and Piat d'Or - they're hoping we'll be able to tell a shiraz from a merlot within weeks.

But are we ready for all that? What do British pub-goers REALLY think of "good" wines?

We are at Topham's Tavern, a traditional pub on the outskirts of Rochdale, Lancs, to find out.

Regulars who admit they know nothing about wine have come to sample expert Chris Scott's wares - lured away from their pints with the promise of free booze and some tasting tips along the way.

Watching Chris, 33, who runs 30/50, a company that introduces people to wine, uncork the reds, our eight volunteers look nervously at my tasting sheets, then longingly at the beer pumps. "I've no idea what to expect," confides Billy, 60, nervously. "I've only had wine twice in my whole life." The pub is old-fashioned and friendly - more Last Of The Summer Wine than wine bar. It's packed when we arrive, but there isn't a wine glass in sight. Behind the bar, two long-opened bottles, one white, one red, languish next to the blackcurrant cordial.

"This is a Boddingtons pub," Karen points out. "And most people here like bitter. We sell white wine sometimes, usually with soda or lemonade, but there's not much demand for red." Chris is hoping the punters will decide otherwise. He has brought seven quality wines ranging from £7.99 to £100 for them to try.

The first is a French white, a Chablis premier cru, which he describes as "having a hint of green apples, plenty of grapefruit and a touch of mineral, with a long length and crisp but balanced acidity." School cleaner and lunchtime supervisor Sandra Lomas, 51, whose usual poison is a half of Foster's lager, is more succinct. "Battery acid," she says, screwing up her face. "I do drink wine sometimes," she adds, "but usually with lemonade. But I wouldn't drink that one." Jason Robinson, 37, a retired airman, says: "It tastes like pears that have gone sour. It'srancid. I'm sorry, I'm spitting it straight out." Billy fixes me with a gummy grimace. "Awful," he says, reaching back for his bitter.

Perhaps the second bottle will suit them better: a New Zealand Whitehaven sauvignon blanc in which Chris detects "a taste of blackberries and blackcurrants with great hints of green peppers and crisp acidity nicely balancedby the sugar". But no. "It catches in the back of the throat like cough mixture," says Sandra, gasping. "It's like petrol," adds her friend Bryan Jackson, 47, a construction planner.

Only retired John Timmons, 54, has a good word to say about it. "It's fruity," he says. "If it will go down well when I'm barbecuing a leg of lamb then that'll do me."

As the reds arrive, Chris is hoping we'll spot the "plums and liquorice flavours, spicy Christmas-cake feel and short length" he's getting from a 1997 Chianti riserva.

But Karen and Sandra don't. "It smells like a church," says Karen. "Like the wood - you know, the smell when you go in."

"It's torture drinking this, like swallowing a load of sherbet lemons," adds Sandra, wincing. Chris's "toasty, earthy" syrah is dismissed as like Ribena, and a £55 Clos des Lambrays grand cru 1999 is "watered-down fruit juice". As the volunteers flock to the bar, ordering pints of lager and bitter to "cleanse" their palates, managing director and lager drinker Ricky Colbeck, 53, gives me a knowing smile and confides that it's "the dog's bollocks".

Despite Chris insisting wines are best sampled in a smoke-free atmosphere, almost everyone is lighting up. And wine No 6, a £16.99 Chard Farm pinot noir, from New Zealand, doesn't go down well.

Chris could taste "cherries and red berries on the nose, just more than a hint of strawberry and a balanced but warming alcohol presence".

Jason laughs: "I could get p****d on that." But Ricky complains: "This tastes like the cheap doubles they serve behind the bar.

"I used to work in a vinegar factory and this tastes like the apple vinegar in there." "It's one of them that doesn't quite make it," says civil servant Mike Swinbourne, 43. "It's theTim Henman of wines."

Chris has saved the most expensivewine, a £100 Italian red, until last. He declares it a wine at its peak - "earthy with a taste of liquorice on the nose, smoky on the palate and with hints of plums and vanilla to explore".

Jason says this is by far the best and factory worker John Adams, 59, loves it too. Ricky is impressed for a different reason. "One of the big tests for me is whether or not I get heartburn from drinking it," he reveals. "There is no way I would with this and I enjoyed it."

Everyone else is distinctly underwhelmed. Mike screws his nose up and gives a bizarre verdict. "It smells like Moaning Tony's armpit," he says. "You don't know him, so never mind. "Or maybe an old settee - you know, one of them that's been dumped and left out in the rain and got really wet and smelly. Yes, that's it, an old settee."

As the last of the £100 dregs are swigged, everyone agrees that despite offering up some of the strangest tasting notes ever written they have enjoyed at least one of the wines. They drift back to their pints until a bloke at the bar shouts over.

"Check it out," he laughs. "Mike is at the bar. I don't know what you've done to him but he's actually ordering a glass of red wine. Now that is definitely a first."

Perhaps the wine revolution is here after all.