It was very nerve-racking because I was leaving one career that I loved, you know, screenwriting is a dream job and I loved it and had worked on great things like Wallace & Grommit. I left that behind to go and do wine and I’ve never regretted it. I think I bring a lot of the screen values of grabbing people and telling the story and bringing that across in wine. Every bottle tells a story. It comes from somewhere, somebody made it and you’ve got to remember, every bottle of wine takes a year to make. It’s not just something that magically appears because somebody has a wine tree that just gives you a bottle of wine. It’s graft and it’s knowledge and it’s a very, very intense thing to give your life to because anything could go wrong at any moment. I’d love to do a TV show about the people behind the wine in Britain, even here in Sussex. Wine seems like an emotional thing for you? It’s easy to forget that blood, sweat and tears go into making it. One wine producer I was talking to in Australia recently is a lovely, lovely man called Steve whose face was literally like an orange. He was incredibly knowledgeable about vines. I said to him, “Do the vines ever talk to you?” He replied “All the time, but it’s a conversation that goes on quite slowly. I’ll say something one year and then it takes a year for the vine to reply.” I also asked him “Is there anything you really fear in the vineyard?” And I was thinking he’d say about the snakes or spiders, but he said “Yeah, Shiraz.” I said, “Why do you fear Shiraz?” He said, “It’s like an octopus mate, it’s got its tentacles over the whole world. You can practically hear it growing and whispering at you. It’s such a vigorous vine. It’s literally like a superman villain; taking over the entire planet” I’ll never buy Shiraz again. Shiraz is scary. It’s a scary, scary vine. In a recent episode of Saturday Kitchen all four people on the show disliked your choice of wine. How did you get it so wrong? It’s a great question. Chefs really are fantastic at food but when it comes to wine they don’t taste 200 wines a week, they don’t see what’s on the shelves. 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