IT IS never a good thing to become too set in one's ways.

In fact, some might say that a key facet of a happy life is the willingness to try something different now and again, given that the only dog that can truly be called 'old' is the one that won't even contemplate attempting a new trick.

Visiting the fantastically different Cairn O'Mohr winery, nestling in the gooey sump of Scotland's Carse of Gowrie fruit basket, I suddenly realised what an aged mutt I had become with regard to wine.

Now I love wine, and I drink it all the time, with occasional breaks for work and driving, but a glance round the cellar at Cairn O'Mohr made me realise that I've been trudging down a deeply rutted road signposted 'Cabernet Sauvignon' for the best part of a decade, letting those dark-red blinkers blind me to a whole wide world of colour and taste.

'Proper' wine must be made from grapes, right? Says who? Well, that's certainly the view propagated by the owners of all those French, Australian and South American vinyards, and who can blame them for protecting their pensions? After all, when was the last time Esso suggested that folk might find cycling a nice change?

The sorely unappreciated truth is that grapes, conveniently equipped with the right sugar and acidity for wine manufacture though they may be, are far from the only fruit fit for fermenting, and as we can't really grow them terribly well in Scotland, simply shouldn't be so important to satisfying our national wine habit when we've plenty native fruit of our own.

Ronald Gillies, mein host at Cairn O'Mohr, hasn't much time for 'grape wine'. Note the wonderful way that appending the word 'grape' in front of the word 'wine' instantly diminishes the vast mainstream wine industry to a subset of something bigger, and reveals how differently Ron sees the world. Grape wine is 'boring'.

Back in the 80s, in common with many of that era, Ron and his wife Judith dabbled in home-brewing, making wine from locally grown fruit like raspberries and brambles - but unlike many of their demi-john bubbling contemporaries, the wine they made was actually quite good, and much sought after among their neighbours.

As a self-described 'surplus son' of a farming family, his two eldest brothers having taken up the arable venture at East Inchmichael Farm, Ron and fellow spare sibling, Grant, had already used their woodworking skills to start up a prosperous wee operation making garden sheds, which taught them a whole lot about business and dealing with the public.

Noting the enthusiasm with which those amateur batches of local fruit wine were being received, albeit as gifts or swaps for other kitchen-table concoctions, Ron decided to up the ante a bit and produce a batch big enough to be worth bottling and labelling commercially.

In that first year, his and Judith's labours yielded 4000 bottles, using locally grown strawberries and raspberries, wild brambles, wild elderberries and oak leaves, and the whole enterprise "just about" covered its costs.

Thirty years, and several million bottles of wine later, their Cairn O'Mohr winery has miraculously retained that "just for the hell of it" homespun spirit, and is still using local ingredients to make fresh high-quality wines with no other agenda beyond that people will enjoy them. Now, however, the annual output is around 250,000 bottles, distributed nationally via ASDA, Sainsbury's, Aldi and ScotMid, as well as through the Dobbies garden centre chain and the hundreds of smart wee high street delicatessens that have sprung up all over the country in the last decade. "Cornershops to castles," smiles Ron.

But the best place to buy Cairn O'Mohr wine is, without doubt, from source. The steading at East Inchmichael has slowly transformed over the years into a visitor centre of some note, a somewhat otherworldy smorgasbord of Easter Island heads carved from tree trunks, winery tours, tasting sessions in the colourful shop, an excellent wee cafe and a general air of self-deprecating humour.

"Over the years we discovered that people are just interested in the place so we started showing them around, and adding wee features here and there. It's good to meet people, and tell them about the wine, and share a bit with them.

"We're TripAdvisor's top-rated attraction in this area," notes the internet savvy Ron, who adds on his latest flyer "New Attraction: I've just washed the van (quick)".

I ask him what his favourite variety is, but he artfully dodges the question, pointing out that he tends to drink "half bottles left over from the tastings", so gets whatever he is given.

As things stand this year, that could be the usual raspberry, strawberry, bramble and elderberry wines, or a medium sweet gooseberry, a choice of Spring or Autumn oak leaf wines, a sparkling Oak and Elder, or a celebrational strawbubbly strawberry-elderflower sparkling blend.

I recall that strawbubbly, a case of which appeared at a friend's wedding, held in an organic restaurant in Glasgow... too sweet for my tastes, but the ladies loved it. I distinctly remember having to carry one of them home, giggling.

There's also a slate of 'experimentals', 'occasionals' and 'seasonals', including rhubarb, beetroot and meadowsweet, and once there was even a banana wine. Locally grown bananas Ron? "Well, they were from Fyffes," he smiles, airing a clearly well-worn joke.

When I popped in to see him, November had dawned, and the autumnal atmosphere hanging over the place was enhanced by vast piles of apples stacked in the yard, undergoing a period of extra ripening to get their sweetness up before pressing for cider, a relatively new product added to the range four years ago.

With Cairn O'Mohr's increased market, its demand for appropriate raw materials has grown way beyond the hedgerow missions upon which Ron and Judith founded the business, and the road end at the winery bears the hopeful sign "We buy apples!"

The hunt for cider fuel recently paid off in the creation of a special single orchard batch, when Cairn O'Mohr's pickers were allowed access to Moncrieff Island, in the Tay, where the King James VI golf club has five old but productive apple trees, and the annual heavy fall of fruit was simply getting in the way of the golf. Taken off the island by the boatload, courtesy of the local Sea Scouts, the two tonnes of apples were enough to make a separate 1000 bottle batch of specially labelled 'King Jimmy's' cider.

Similarly in demand are the elderflowers and elderberries that provide seasonal favourites at either end of Cairn O'Mohr's taste spectrum, the light aromatic flowers populating a vastly popular white, the rich sweet berries powering a flavoursome red.

"Fifteen years ago, no-one knew what an elderflower was, let alone what it tasted of, but people are now rediscovering the wild resources that are out there, and that's great," said Ron, who also runs the Scottish Wild Harvest facebook page.

"We still pick from elders in the wild, but we need quite a lot, so we started experimenting with growing cuttings in a field, and we've got a plantation now. They work best with a good hard prune now and then, but the downside is you get no fruit the next year, so we prune half one year, half the next."

Alongside this, possibly the only commercial elderflower crop in Scotland, Ron and his team are habitual 'plunkers', sticking cuttings into wild ground wherever they see a likely space, restocking the countryside with young elderflower.

In the cellar at Cairn O'Mohr, there is a liquid archive of one bottle from each 1000 litre batch produced: "Dusty relics of family history, fun and work," mused Ron, poking about amongst the bottles. It is an impressive record of the family's achievement, all the same, and surely no 'grape wine' connoisseur would dare suggest any less worthy a cache than those stashed under the chateaus of Europe?

When I got home, I realised that there had actually been a bottle of Cairn O'Mhor raspberry wine lurking in my house for a couple of years, and that it must therefore have survived more than a few desperate searches for after-hours alcoholic sustenance, invisible to me behind my Cab Sav blinkers.

It isn't there anymore. But another like it, and some of its friends, will be paying me a visit very soon, I can assure you.

Check out the full range, plus seasonal specials - award-winning Mulled Cider; Mulled Elderberry, Berry Christmas, and that Sparkling Strawberry - at www.cairnomohr.com/shop