Simon Green, spokesman for consumer pressure group, Wineoption.org; wine trade you're letting us consumers down

Wineoption.org was a simple idea which I had with a few friends a long time ago. We all liked wine, and drank a fair bit of it but we're not wine buffs. We knew a few basics about wine but not enough to bore a dinner party. What really got us going was the collective feeling that the wine trade takes cynical advantage of us. We know we're not "experts", but we resented being treated like gullible idiots.

For example, there seem to have been more and more so-called fantastic offers of supposedly £10 wine for only £5 which, when you got it home, made you wonder who on earth would ever have paid £10 for it in the first place.

Then there's those tasting notes: preposterously worded labels in the wine shelves which the supermarkets love so much - designed apparently to convince us that every bottle on the shelf is perfectly delicious.

Surely, we thought, producers and retailers can't be so stupid as to think that normal human beings actually think and talk in that kind of language, so one could only assume it's all a conspiracy to mystify and confuse us into parting with our cash - in the scared belief that some superior wine authority knows best.

The levels of alcohol in wine is another potent issue. All of us are conscious these have been increasing steadily in recent years.

Yet half the time it's ridiculously difficult to discover just what the alcohol level is, since it's often hidden away in tiny numbers on the back label. The last thing most of us want is a healthy meal served up with some blockbuster of a wine with about 14.5% alcohol - which is what a lot of them seem to have nowadays.

We also agreed we simply don't want that version of wine at lunchtime or on a warm summer's day, either. Yet producers and retailers act as if all we want is the same old stuff (presented with ever more flowery language), laid out in the same old way,
but at half the price.

And if you want anything different, good luck to you!

We also felt that most wine writers don't do much for people like us. Many of them seem to be even more into the myths and the snobbery aspects of wine than the producers and retailers - so it seemed unlikely that our simple concerns would get much sympathy from most of them.

So rather than appeal to that branch of the wine establishment, a little over a year ago we came up with the idea of a deliberately populist wine website, rudely inviting a rather arrogant and condescending industry to wake up and listen to us - Mr and Mrs Average Wine Drinker.

Reason: we probably represent much more of the money that the wine industry rakes in than do Mr and Mrs Elite Connoisseur.

We honestly felt, and still feel, the wine trade could actually sell a lot more wine if it did pay some heed to what we are saying - and it now seems to be.

The site has shown me that we are not alone. There's a lot of people out there who feel the way we did: ordinary wine drinkers who find it difficult to speak up through fear of sounding naïve or ignorant about wine.

There are also people from within the wine industry who agree change is needed if the industry is to have a healthy future and engage with 21st Century consumers.

We have interviewed some of them and published their comments on the site.

As it has grown, various good, independent thinkers from the world of wine, have pitched in and offered to add their voice. We have more in store in the coming months. They don't necessarily agree with us 100%, but they are all in agreement with the need for a radical new approach to the marketing of wine.

Right now I'm in the process of inviting our supporters, particularly the corporate ones, to let me identify them and I hope soon to be able to publish a list of the (sometimes quite surprising) cross section of industry figures who feel much the way we did around that kitchen table a while ago.

Needless to say, we welcome all the additional support we can get - both from consumers and the industry, so I'll be happy to hear from all who want to add their voice to ours.

• Harpers Says...