IT was just another Friday tea time in the home of this knackered mother.

Inside the kitchen, her natural habitat of course, she was slaving away, fish fingers under the grill for her three children George, eight, Xander, five, and Alice, three.

Helen McGinn was stepping over the dogs while gulping the half-cup of lukewarm tea trying to summon up the energy to reach the end of another frantic day.

And then it happened at exactly 5.50pm.

Its title read simply: “book” and its contents marked the start of an exciting new chapter.

It read: “I think your blog is brilliant. I really like how you are making wine interesting and accessible. I too am a knackered mother and wine lover, oh and I happen to be the editorial director at Pan Macmillan. I’d be interested in maybe talking to you about a wine book.

“I won’t go on here, but if you are interested in talking let me know and we will continue the conversation.”

Helen, who discovered her love for wine after joining her university’s wine society, said: “I screamed and started whooping so then the children started screaming. After that the smoke alarm went off because I’d forgotten the fish fingers under the grill!

“So I am there with the broom hitting that, the dogs were barking, the children were still screaming, it was complete chaos, but it was funny because when it came in I just knew it was going to work.”

Today, one year later, the book called The Knackered Mother’s Wine Club is on sale across the UK. And it has been tipped for such huge success that Helen has already secured a weekly wine column in a national newspaper.

Helen, giggled and said: “I find the whole thing amazing!

I’m still having a slight out of body experience I have to say. When the box came with the first two books in it, it took me 20 minutes to pluck up the courage to open it.

“It was almost like the fear of ‘if I touch it it will disappear’, I couldn’t believe there was going to be a book inside with words I’d written.”

Helen, who lives in Beaulieu with her husband Ross, a designer, used to work as a wine buyer for Tesco in London for years until she left to have her children. It was then the self-confessed knackered mum turned a weekly email full of wine recommendations to friends and family into her now award-winning blog, when she was googling about a breast feeding issue and discovered the world of “mummy blogging.”

Helen, who also runs her own wine consultancy, said she began posting every week and after three years she received the surprise email.

The 40-year-old, said: “When I started the blog my attitude was that it is not something that will generate an income, it was a hobby. But that’s the beauty of blogging you never know where it will lead you.”

The book, which Helen wrote on Saturdays while her husband took the children out, is divided up into different chapters reflecting what knackered mums would relate to – a typical school year including ‘back to school’ and ‘dry January’.

It took one year to write- and from start to finish, she has loved every minute.

Among the highlights was involving women from her New Forest monthly book club, who appear in a dedicated chapter in the book and will go to the glitzy book launch at a wine bar in London with Helen.

But now although there are already plans for a second book on the horizon, Helen wants to empower as many knackered mothers as possible to have the confidence to steer clear of automatically picking the second-cheapest wine on the wine list or always choosing wines with the nicest-looking labels.

She said: “Knackered mothers – we are all in the same position, we are all probably trying to function on no more than six hours sleep a night tops.

What I love about it though is there is a feeling we are all in this together. I love the fact that wine is associated with bringing people together, and life’s too short to be drinking bad wine!

“It upsets me to think people are intimidated by wine. It is about trying to help people step outside their wine comfort zone. I want to make people laugh and give them the confidence to buy something different and if the book does that, I will be very happy and, of course I will keep blogging.”

n Column extracted from The Knackered Mother’s Wine Club by Helen McGinn published by Macmillan at £12.99.

n Each week Helen adds a couple of wines she has tried and tested to her blog as well as sharing details about life as a knackered mother-of-three.

n Visit knackeredmotherswineclub.com