The event

I remember taking my first sip of wine when I was 10. It was New Year's Eve, and Mum, Dad, my brother and I were watching Big Ben strike midnight as fireworks exploded in the distance over the River Tyne. I took a slightly-too-large gulp of Mum's supermarket red, twisted my face, stifled a 'Euucchh', then broke into a grin and declared the wine was, 'Niiiiiiccce'.

A few years ago, some friends tried to introduce me to wine-tasting evenings. Oh, how I laughed at the ponciness of it all, and refused to be brought up to their level. But so many people seem to enjoy them, I thought I should give it a try.

Chris Scott, founder of wine-tasting company 30/50, arrived at 7pm to set up. The company provides all the wine and glasses, so there's minimal clearing up - unless, like us, you continue 'tasting' the wine long after he's left. They even bring spittoons if you want to take it really seriously. When the guests arrived, we were all handed tasting notes so we could rate the wine and took our seats.

What we drank

We did 30/50's Introductory Tasting and tried eight different wines - four white, three red and a port. You're told the name, age, country and price of the wine you're tasting, and asked to rely on your nose rather than your mouth to pick out the flavours. We discovered that the best way is to draw air through your mouth - and yes, this involves opening it while it's full of wine. We all took a gulp, leaned forward, opened our mouths slightly and sucked. Cue lots of dribbling down chins until we mastered the technique!

White wine number three was a 'blind' tasting. This doesn't mean you're blindfolded, but the bottle is wrapped so you can't see the label. To help us out, Chris provided a list of 18 potential candidates, and a description of the notes, palate, acidity and aromas. For the first time, I thought I recognised an aroma (gooseberry), and I felt I recognised it as a New Zealand sauvignon blanc (my current tipple of choice), so I plumped for the Whitehaven Sauvignon Blanc. And lo and behold, I got it right. Moving on to the reds, Helen proclaimed the first (a Rioja) a 'hangover in a glass', to nods and murmurs of agreement. During the tasting of the last red, the most expensive wine of the evening at £10.69 a bottle, we learned a great way of pricing wine. It's very crude, but it works. You swill it around your mouth, swallow, leave your mouth slightly open then see how long the taste lasts in your mouth. One second equals £1. So, next time your friend comes over with an 'expensive' bottle of wine, you'll know to what extent you need to return the gesture.

Hangover potential

The night was brilliant fun. Chris was a good laugh as well as being very knowledgeable, there were the obligatory jokes about spitting or swallowing which got us laughing every time (sad, I know), we could gossip in-between wines, and he left most of the leftovers for us to drink when he'd gone. Oh, and we learned quite a bit about wine, too.