The Wine Runner

With his sixtieth birthday looming, Colin Renton decides that it's time to escape office life and focus on achieving some of his unfulfilled goals.

He embarks on a year-long adventure that takes him from the busy streets of Edinburgh to the traffic-free roads, sodden fields and dusty paths of Europe's winemaking regions. He laces up his running shoes and joins thousands of fellow athletes in races that test him over various distances, degrees of difficulty and levels of seriousness. His schedule, which culminates with a marathon debut, takes him to places he would otherwise not have visited.

On his travels, he seeks out local wines that deserve a place in a carefully chosen twelve-bottle case, a process that throws up some fascinating insights and introduces him to a vintage crop of engaging characters.

The crossover between running and wine uncorks a tale of endurance, curiosity and discovery, told in an accessible style and served up with a splash of local colour and a drop of wry humour.