Peter Richards and Susie Barrie – stars of TV’s Saturday Kitchen and the world’s youngest married Masters of Wine – are in their Winchester home revealing all.

“I’m fresh and racy,” giggles Susie.

“I’m definitely smooth and rich,” adds Peter.

“The most important factor for me is it’s really important that people experiment and have fun experimenting.”

The conversation may sound odd for a business discussion but it’s actually less racy than you may imagine.

We’re talking Wine Festival Winchester, an event the couple have launched since moving to the city – and how they have come up with a unique idea of helping more people experiment with wine.

Everyone who walks through the doors of the Guildhall, Winchester, including Peter and Susie, will wear one of six badges based on their personal taste of wine style.

The Follow Your Taste badge will guide each wine lover towards colour-coded bottles around the festival so people can broaden their horizons with confidence, trying different types of wine within the same style.

Susie explains: “One of them is ‘Do you like it Fresh and Racy?’ and that will be green so if you think ‘I like really refreshing New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc’, you will be a green person. You might know Sauvignon Blanc but there might be a whole load of other quirky varieties from weird places you might not normally try, but we can flag them up and get you trying different things.”

The idea of launching the festival came when Susie and Peter, who also run a wine school in the city, moved to Winchester five years ago. They fell in love with the food and drink scene and realised there was an opportunity to be able to make their passion more accessible to the wider public by introducing a specialist wine festival in the lead up to Christmas.

The pair, who met at a tasting event when they were both working as wine journalists in 2003, both passed rigorous exams to be Masters of Wine since moving to Winchester.

The Master of Wine is the highest qualification there is when it comes to tasting and identifying wines and it only has a seven per cent pass rate. There are only about 300 people in the world who can call themselves Masters of Wine, and there are only two other married couples.

Despite the prestigious titles, Peter and Susie are determined to make wine tasting accessible to anyone.

“You go to some of these wine events and it can be quite intimidating,” says Peter, adding that visitors won’t need to know about gooseberries, blackcurrant leaves, sweaty saddles, tannins and acidity. “I think in the past the wine trade has perhaps been a bit too slow in helping people. You walk into a room full of wine and think, my goodness, where do I start?

Our job is to help people, we want it to be more accessible. It’s a bit of fun but it’s got a serious intent, which is to help people experiment.

“We’re aware there’s a whole raft of people out there who have some sort of enthusiasm about wine, but might not necessarily be interested in watching the TV or picking up a book or a magazine but would be excited about going to something like a festival.”

More than 2,000 people are expected at the festival, which will raise cash for Naomi House and features local producers and suppliers selling wine and food at discount prices.

Peter and Susie will also be on hand to chat, answer questions, recommend wines and lead masterclasses, including a chocolate and port pairing session.

The 2,000 visitors will be in safe hands.

Peter and Susie feature on BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen hosted by Hampshire’s James Martin on which they pair the celebrity guests’ meals with the perfect wines.

It means they have cooked recipes from some of the world’s most famous chefs.

“A lot of people ask whether we actually make the recipes and we do – well Susie does. It’s really important to us to cook the dishes so we can make sure we can pair them with exactly the right wine.”

However, though their Winchester home boasts a show-home style kitchen, it’s sometimes not the easiest job to create some of the A-list’s recipes.

“One involved filtering tea through Nordic moss,” says Susie.

“It wasn’t from Norway but I had to pick it out of the garden, so next best thing, Winchester moss and I filtered some tea through it. What we love best is when you get a Michelin chef who does something quite simple so there aren’t thousands of ingredients. It will be simple, easy to do and taste great.

“Of course, living and working together and both being Masters of Wine, we have our disagreements.

We used to disagree more about wine than we do now.”

“Is that on record?” jokes Peter, who grew up in the New Forest.

It is clear Peter and Susie, though unable to agree on the perfect last supper (with wine pairings), have exactly the same focus – sharing their passion with the public.

Peter adds: “We feel so lucky to have wine as our profession but also as our personal life. Winchester is becoming a really exciting place and it was only natural to use our expertise to organise the festival. We want to help make Winchester one of the key gastronomic hubs in the country and I think we’re getting there.”

Wine Festival Winchester

Wine Festival Winchester runs from November 21 to November 23 in the Guildhall, Winchester.

Tickets, which cost £25 and include entry to the festival as well as a free wine glass worth £12.50, are available from thewinefestival.co.uk

The VIP night on Friday, November 21, costs £35.

The festival is supporting Naomi House and launches the same weekend as Winchester's Christmas market.

An early discount of 20 per cent on tickets is available to readers using code WFWHS2014 at checkout on the website.