I'm a girl who loves a drop of the red stuff. I was feeling gloomy on the way home - I'd had a really drudgy day at work, not leaving my desk all day except to go to the ladies and to make a cup of tea.

I was looking forward to a glass of Rioja and a nice meal this evening when I thought that a nice pic of the day would be a real cork - they're getting rarer now. Of the half a dozen or so bottles of wine on the rack, only one had a real cork.

The corkscrew has a motto on it 'quality, character, consistency' and on the other side says 'Wolf Blass Wines'. It's in more or less constant use in the house and has been since 1988, when I won 'the holiday of a lifetime' through Wolf Blass.

I'd been staying in the Crest Hotel in York, opposite the castle and had enjoyed a meal in their restaurant with two colleagues when we spotted a competition to win a holiday in Australia. All you had to do was buy a bottle of Wolf Blass wine and you got an entry form. We all entered and thought no more of it.

A couple of months later, I received a strange letter in the post. It told me I'd been selected in the top ten, they couldn't choose between them and please could I redo my tie breaker. What's the catch I thought? I looked closely - couldn't see any small print about needing to go back to the hotel, couldn't see any need to spend any more money and the return envelope had a real stamp on it. I thought that even if they'd sent the same letter to a hundred people I stood a good chance. You see my statistics training as a market researcher had to come in useful someday.

It came in even more useful because I thought of four tie breaker slogans and 'polled' my family, friends and work colleagues to see which one they preferred. I used the one most people liked.

They asked you to say why all restaurants should stock Australian wine and I said 'Australian wines knock others into a corked hat!' Pretty corny I know but the judges liked it and I won the competition. I can't tell you how weird it was sitting at my desk, with all my colleagues around me while a man I'd never met told me I was going to the other side of the world on a wine tasting tour, all expenses paid.

I met Wolf Blass (the man himself), had the most fantastic time in Australia, taking in the barrier reef, Sydney, Adelaide and the wine producing region of the Barossa Valley and had a stop over in Singapore on the way home. It was absolutely fantastic. It wasn't meant to be such an extravagant prize but the wine shipper was closing down its UK operation and I think they liked the fact that the winner wasn't some jaded businessman who'd seen it all and done it all. I was only 28 and hadn't travelled widely at all. They kept throwing in extras to the original two weeks in Adelaide, some internal flights, an extension of two weeks so I could go to Sydney and Cairns, the stopover on the way home and spending money too.

I was chauffeured around the Wolf Blass estates in a 1960 Jaguar by the Wolf Blass marketing manager and generally treated like a princess. I could have got very used to that!

Funnily enough, when I got my letter telling me I was in the top ten, so did a colleague of mine, Clive Smith-Langridge. I still don't know actually how many people got that letter but I don't really care any more. I have such great memories of a fantastic holiday.