Imagine that you are hosting a party for some of your best friends. The atmosphere is bubbling with the excitement of everyone chatting and mingling with each other, when all of a sudden you hear a crashing sound and see the sight that every host prays will never happen; a glass of red wine has taken a swan dive and landed not on your tile floor where it is easy to clean up but on to your very embarrassed guest and all over your furniture. It would appear that Murphy’s Law has struck again, but don’t panic, it is possible to get red wine stains out! The first thing to do (aside from not panicking) when cleaning red wine spills is to remove the excess spillage. If the wine has been spilled on a couch or carpet take an absorbent cloth (something you don’t mind being stained) or paper towel and blot the excess wine, do not rub in any way! The point of blotting it to remove the wine without working it further into the fabric. If it was a piece of clothing that has been spilled on, remove the article and blot in the same manner.

Once the excess wine has been removed it is very important to rinse the carpet, furniture or clothing to dilute the wine before it has a chance to set in. The best method for this is going to vary on what exactly where the spill is. For clothing or other items that are easily removed, pour cold water from the backside. For items such as carpets and sofas pouring water directly onto the stain and blotting with an absorbent cloth immediately works best. There is a good chance that this will not take the stain out completely. Carpet and furniture cleaner very well may need to be used. In the past I have had much success with Resolve cleaners for carpets, and for laundry there are many stain removers that should be helpful. A little trick my mother taught me which works wonders is Lestoil. I know some of you may be thinking to yourself that you always thought Lestoil was a floor cleaner, but when diluted with water and used as a soaking agent it works wonders on lots of stains including grease (when mixed with hot water) and wine (when mixed with cold water).

Of course even with all your best efforts there is always the chance that the red wine is going to be so stubborn that you need to call in the professionals. Carpets and furniture sometimes are dry clean only but it is still best to remove as much of the stain as possible while it is still wet because this will make it easier for the professionals to remove the remnants. The key to ensuring effective stain removal is time. Do not let a stain sit for days or weeks before deciding to try to remove it and don’t wait a week before ringing a carpet cleaner because by then it might just be too late and the stain is now a permanent fixture. The same goes for clothing, don’t wait to wash your shirt or pants. I once watched a friend take a shirt out of the washing machine become horrified at the fact that the red wine didnít come out of her top. When I asked her when she spilled on herself, she told me that it was from a week before. No wonder the stain didnít come out! In the end there is always going to be the possibility that the stain has decided that it never wants to come out or it will not come out completely.

Taking the proper steps the moment a spill occurs can greatly reduce the chance of a permanent stain. best wine under 30 dollarsThere is no easy way to prevent spills and stains, aside from slipcovers or not serving red wine at social events, so when a spill does happen remember to stay calm, work quickly and to blot.best wine list bay areaPicture the scene: it's 20 minutes before the dinner party starts. beer and wine giftsThe wine merchants are shut. top 10 wine cocktailsAnd a dusty bottle of Jacobs Creek simply won't do. top selling wine in usaLuckily, there are some good wines available from the supermarket, but spotting them requires a little savvy. what time can you buy wine in pa

Time to rope in author of Wine & Food and BBC One's Saturday Kitchen Live's wine expert, Jane Parkinson, for some advice.Use the best wine appsYou won't find too many sophisticated wine apps on Play Store or iTunes just yet, but there are a few worth trying. Supermarket Wine collates newspaper reviews, profiling each wine clearly so you can see the grape, region and price as well as the newspaper name, the date of the review and the name of the reviewer. 60secondreviews Wine posts one-minute video reviews of supermarket wines. Also try the Vivino wine app which allows you to use your phone's camera to scan in and recognise different types (and see whether it's good value for money). Go online to find the best supermarket winesMost supermarkets have their own dedicated website page. This might sound a bit biased, but most customers are free to post their own reviews. features forums, reviews and wines of the week, which can come in handy. There's also bringabottle.co.uk, which is a useful price comparison site that's relatively new and covers wines, beer and spirits on the high street.

You can look up a certain wine, see where the cheapest bottle is stocked and then click through to that retailer's website. which is a subscription-based site (with a free trial option) that reviews 200 wines every month. The reviews aren't exclusively supermarket wines but they're still covered comprehensively. The reviews are honest to the point of being brutal.Don't be a supermarket wine snobAldi and Lidl have been seriously busy in the last couple of years revamping their wine range, and the hard work is starting to pay off so give them a go, you'll be pleasantly surprised (most of the time). The supermarket's Exquisite Collection, alongside other more mainstream own-brands like Tesco's Finest, can be a wellspring of good drops. The best are a real win-win because they come from renowned winemakers in a certain region but you're not paying to have that revered name splashed across the label. Not sure what to get? Consult our guide to wine grapes. Read the label in the supermarket's aisleMost people don't take advantage of the help supermarkets provide in the wine aisle itself, so instead of doing a smash and grab, take an extra minute or two to look around.

Look at the Co-op for instance. Next to each wine name on its shelves are little bars with a scale on it. Every white wine is measured on a dry to sweet scale and every red wine on a light to heavy scale - pretty useful if you don't know the wine. Meanwhile, at Waitrose, as well as having their own in-store wine experts to hand, they feature little shelf barkers highlighting their wine buyers' current favourites, which in my experience are always worth a try.In Morrisons, they've categorised nearly all their wines under one of the four style groups to help us choose - fresh, smooth, rich and sweet. Again, our wine guide is also worth a look.Dodge dead-in-the-water discountsThere are masses of tempting discounts screaming at us from the aisles, and although some are genuine bargains the ones to ignore are the bottles you recognise for being on discount all the time, because it probably means they wouldn't have been worth the full price tag in the first place. Be savvy about blingFoil stickers on bottles usually denote a competition medal and this can be a really useful guide if you want a quick bit of reassurance.

Be careful: they don't always specify the year of the award, so you could be picking up a bottle that won a gong six years ago for the wine it made six years ago, while the newer version of the wine might have gone seriously downhill in quality - a difficult vintage weather-wise, for example, or a change of ownership.Broaden your wine regions In the UK we have some of the best wine choice in the world, so make the most of it. If you're used to a country or region, stick to that but just try a different grape or region. For example, if you like red Rioja, try a red from Navarra (Rioja's neighbouring region), or just any other red from a Spanish region to start branching out. Not sure what's what? Read our grape guide here. Spend more to avoid the torture of taxThe punitive alcohol tax we endure in this country applies more to supermarket wine than most other places we buy wine from because typically this is where the cheapest bottles can be found. The less you pay for wine, proportionally the more you pay in tax.