I COME from the binge drinking generation and I'm not ashamed of it. In fact, I blame the Government.

If they'd found us more worthwhile things to do within the local community, we wouldn't have to spend every Friday and Saturday night (Monday and Tuesday if you're a student) drinking ourselves into oblivion with the aid of alcopops and vodka.

But it seems my preferred weekend hobby has done more than just damage to my liver - I have been left with absolutely no appreciation for alcohol whatsoever.

As far as I'm concerned, my dad's finest Scotch whiskey is for party shots, beer festivals are for having a really good time and wine is for desperate measures when everything else has run out.

But I'm growing up a bit now and thought it was about time I dragged some sophistication into my shamelessly shallow life.

"Wine tasting!" I exclaimed after mulling over how I was going to achieve such a feat. It was a brilliant idea. I could pretend to be sensible and still get drunk at the same time! genius.

Trying to find a wine tasting group locally, however, wasn't as easy.

Hoping I could find something within staggering distance of my Canvey Island home, I was in for a shock. Apparently Canvey Islanders are not at all interested in discussing, sniffing and gargling wine.

Instead I was forced to head all the way to Brentwood, to the Brentwood Wine Appreciation Society to be exact.

The group meet once a month at the Shenfield Parish Hall and my visit earlier this week co-incided with a talk by Neil Courtier from Grape Sense, who is an expert in educating people about wine.

He certainly knew his stuff. The evening was centered around Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and Neil proceeded to discuss seven or eight different wines from around the world.

His knowledge of each one was phenomenal. I'd only ever thought that the price was important, but now I was faced with a whole barrel of issues to consider before deciding which wine to go for.

Neil explained that climate, soil, the types of grapes and how they're grown can all massively effect the taste of a wine.

After discussing each one, he'd generously hand out a bottle or two for everyone to get a little taste of what he was on about.

So far so good. But it was when he started discussing the flavours that I got a little confused.

"I'm getting a buttery tone, ripe peach and a toffee like aroma from this," he said.

Someone must be playing a really cruel joke on him, I thought. How can he have wine in that glass?

But he continued nevertheless with phrases such as: "It's very expressive and has that roundness of the mouth" and "It has that lifted, baked-lemon aroma".

I sniffed hard at my wine and sipped at it slowly, trying to savour the flavour. I was desperate to know what he was on about.

I was losing hope of fitting in with the ageing crowd of wine tasters and decided I would have to accept that my place in the drinking world was in a packed nightclub, screaming to the bartender over the sound of the music for yet another Smirnoff Ice.

But then the gentlemen next to me took pity after spying my furrowed brow. He told me he was a big fan of the social aspect of the club and they regularly set off on wine tasting holidays.

Things were definitely looking up.

I decided to pay more attention and got very into the explanation about how if one set of grapes is grown next to a brick wall with lots of shade, they will produce completely different wine to the same grapes grown nearby in the open sunshine.

Neil was also very good at pointing out which foods go well with each wine, which I thought was very useful information seeing as I like eating almost as much as I like drinking.

He also briefly touched on the debate between corked bottles and screw caps and seemed to suggest that the difference affected the taste of the wine. And there was I thinking that screw caps were invented for when people wanted to sit in a park with some friends and get smashed and didn't want the hassle of a bottle opener. How ignorant I was.

By the time I left, my mind boggled at the amount of information it had procured. I had no idea there was so much to wine and I actually found it all very interesting.

The club is great for meeting new people or taking along a few pals to and you even get to buy a few bottles of what you've sampled at the end.

No one mentioned anything about an after-club house party but I could tell they were definitely the sort that would be up for it.

I decided next time I'd suggest that after the wine tasting we all crash at mine for the night and go wild.

To join Brentwood Wine Appreciation Society costs either £70 for the year, which includes all of the tastings, or £30 for just three sessions which is renewable.

For more information on the club and what's involved, contact chairman Brian Hadland on 01277 217464.