Cordon Bleu Sommelier Course begins...

My first week of sommelier diploma is now done and dusted. The more I learn about wine, the more I realise just how much there is to learn. Our teacher is fantastic. He was a highly respected sommelier at Le Crillon and has a wealth of experience, plus, importantly, he has that rare ability to impart information in an engaging, coherent way, peppered with entertaining anecdotes where appropriate. I am so lucky.

We have just had the somewhat dramatic news broken to us that we will be off to assist with harvesting the grapes next week. It all sounded desperately exciting until we learned of not just the hard labour involved, but also the animal friends we will no doubt be becoming very close with during our back-breaking grape picking activity in France. Think spiders and field mice - I'm assuming most of the snakes will have gone to ground by then!

I'm off to Bordeaux. For a fortnight. I've been instructed that my wardrobe should consist of gardening clothes for mucking right in with every aspect of wine production, not Dolce & Gabanna for any Grand Cru tastings.

Fellow students are of all ages from all around the world. P - my initial fave - has already produced her own wine in the Sonoma Valley, California. Back to the sartorial side and Friday saw a number of us gals close to tears when we had our initial try on sesh for our course suits. Stop reading if you're easily offended but one of my course members took one look at me in my navy blue 100% polyester get up and said I looked like Claire Balding's wrestling partner. I just needed DM boots. The trousers were so high waisted - far from a retro fashiony cut - that my chest rested on the waistband. The synthetic seam was cut so high between our legs we feared infection. And don't get me started on the jacket. Thank the Lord that our teacher's intelligence even stretched to fashion. I looked at him in his stylish suit, he looked at my clownish garb and the Cordon B Director made a snap decision that we could never be taken seriously in the wine world looking like that. We're off to Zara Monday morning first thing.