I'm really too old to be bothering with New Year Resolutions. The March of Time (how many readers remember that - or to be more precise the five-minute new-features produced for cinemas by 20th Century-Fox?) dictates that one eases up on this and that, and what one can or cannot do and when. So I find that I drink less than I used to, tending to forswear the aperitif sherry and the after-meal Port or brandy. With the meal I try to drink wine that I have good reason to think is cleanly made with a minimum of additives. This can come from information on the label, or more often from knowing the producer.

Look at a bottle of wine - I have several examples before me, of good local reds.

All the present laws require is for the label to say that it is dry, red wine, the quantity in the bottle and the level of alcohol. Producers are now adding limited information about grapes, but nothing about additives. But wine is now very big business; it is a food, albeit produced in a special way, but food nonetheless and should be subject to food production regulations. So say our EU peers.

See what the future holds. I am looking at a bottle of wine that will be sold in the EU, and the information that is now obligatory strips away the romantic mists of wine being the gift of the gods. It reads: Ingredients (greatest first): Grapes, Tartaric Acid, Preservative (Sulphur Dioxide), Ascorbic Acid. Made using Yeast. Cleared using Bentonite and Filtration".

I was talking about this to one of Australia's "Flying Winemakers" the other day, a charming slip of a 30-year-old girl with years of experience in Chile, France and Italy already behind her. She thought it perfectly natural to "balance" the wines with additives, including oak chippings in bulk wines (at fermentation stage). In which case, I suggested, "oak" will have to be disclosed as an ingredient. This "timbering" of our beloved drink goes too far in some cases. I have recently tasted wines from both European and New World producers where the flavour that leaps first on to the tongue is oak, probably to disguise shortcoming in other departments.

The use of oak is now very widespread. With a new French oak barrel costing $300 upwards, I sometimes wonder how small producers afford the new barrels they say each vintage is fermented and/or matured in. I suspect that often we are not told the truth. Winemakers in this country vary a great deal. Some I know invest heavily each year in new barrels, and it shows in their New World style of wines. Others are clearly maturing their produce in large old barrels, which creates a slightly musty "flavour of cellar". As some of the greatest wines of all time from Bordeaux were undoubtedly matured in this way I, see no harm in this and find the resulting wine often less raucous and entirely acceptable.

The other development well under way, and which will continue in this country is to use the latest vinification and maturation techniques to create fresher, fruit-driven wines from local grape varieties. Countries like Austria acknowledged this years ago. I remember the shock of tasting their white Gruener Veltliner for the first time - green, sharp and redolent of unripe gooseberries. But today, although still identifiable as a different variety, this grape now produces big, rounded, friendly fruity wine acceptable to the international palate. The Bulgarian red Mavrud will take a similar route. It is too good a grape to be abandoned in favour of Cabernet Sauvignon (nowadays, often boring and over-oaked), or even Merlot. The Ancient Thracian Winery's Mavrud proves this point to me.

My advice about buying everyday wines is to explore. Explore the supermarket shelves if you have to, in which case, buy say six bottles of the same grape from different producers and see which ones you like best. But for preference buy from the gate. Call the winery to fix a time for a visit, then go, taste and buy, as a group if you can, so that you get more opinions. Frequently there will be bread and cheese to assist your taste buds. As wine is designed to drink with food, for an inexperienced taster cheese is a reliable way of getting the best out of a wine. In the trade they say "Buy with apples, sell with cheese". Happy hunting!