Life’s too short to drink bad wine You’re exhausted, fed up with childcare, cooking and multi-tasking and longing for that much deserved glass of wine. A simple solution for a complicated day, and one that Helen McGinn struck upon with the Knackered Mother’s Wine Club and it snowballed from there…
Who was your inspiration? I think it was those who came to talk at that Wine Society, all so enthusiastic about the world of wine. Then I started reading more
books about it, Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson’s World Atlas was – and still is – one of my favourites. Do you need lots of qualifications as well as a very good nose? I did years of wine exams but really, the more you taste the more you learn. And I think we’re all given a fairly similar sense of smell and set of taste buds, it’s what you do with them that makes the difference. Where did the inspiration come from for the Knackered Mother’s Wine Club? I’d discovered the world of parenting blogs when I had my first baby and loved the idea of getting advice from others I could relate to rather than just a textbook. I used to send emails to friends with news on wine offers when I was a supermarket wine buyer and my lightbulb moment – if you can call it that, I was knackered at the time – was turning it into a blog. I started posting a couple of wines each week and it grew from there. What’s most surprised you? I had no idea that a simple blog would create a whole new career for me. It led to books,
46 schoolnotices.co.uk SPRING 2021
PHOTOGRAPH: ©SARAH COX
How did you get into the world of wine? I joined the Wine Society at University, primarily because it was the cheapest way to get four half glasses of wine on a Thursday night. But I soon realised I was genuinely interested in the subject, the people, the places and of course what was inside the bottle. So, I thought I’d try and make a living out of it and was lucky enough to get a place on a graduate training scheme at a big supermarket. I then bugged the head of the wine department until they gave me a job.
