We say thank you and goodbye to Philip Reddaway and hello to Andrew Polmear who is going to write a regular column about his love of wine

Supermarket wine has come a long way since those early days, the 1960s, when Sainsbury’s first introduced Vin de Pays de l’Herault and Minervois to their shelves for the same price that we used to pay for a Liebfraumilch or Bull’s Blood. I remember the excitement then – we felt we were drinking real wine that seemed to taste of the soil of those sun-baked parts of France rather than a factory product. Things have come a long way since then but there is still a dilemma when you are trying to buy a bottle of wine for under £10: do you buy a full-bodied wine from a reliable area that produces a lot of wine for the supermarket buyers, or do you seek out a wine that has something unique? A wine made with the carmenere grape from the central valley of Chile is always going to be full and fruity, but, in the end, unmemorable. A wine made by a single producer that has come from a small well-defined area with its unique blend of rock, soil and sun can stop a meal in its tracks, and transport you to that part of Italy, France or Spain where it was made.

So, how do you find these wines from small producers? The easy way, of course, is to pay more. The great chateaux of Bordeaux and domaines of Burgundy make their money because each wine tastes different (and wonderful) and each year tastes different too. But you have to pay far too much even for poor cousins of those great wines because of where they come from. Instead, choose an area which is not famous but where the wine is still made by small producers, and get to know who makes the real thing. My own favourite is the Languedoc in southern France. Within that area let me pick just two examples: Faugères and St-Chinian. They are neighbouring small villages only 30 kilometres apart, they use the same grapes, they have the same sunshine, their vineyards are on south facing slopes. But Faugères lies on rock called schist with quite a thin layer of soil on top, while St-Chinian, on gentler hills, has thicker soil and a mix of schist and limestone. In the Faugères you taste the flintiness of vines whose roots are deep in fissures in the rock. St-Chinian wine is softer, more rounded; you can taste the easier life those vines have had.

Both those areas make great wines but you won’t find them for under £10. What you may find under £10 is wine with character. And I would rather spend an evening with a wine of character than with one with fewer flaws but which, in the end, is bland. If you feel the same, search online, look in the stores and even go there. You can go tasting from domaine to domaine, or go in July, time it right, and you can taste all day at the wine fairs held in each village to ‘show’ the wines of the previous years’ harvest.

Andrew Polmear is a retired doctor who divides his time between Brighton and the Languedoc.