Careful mother not starting to drink red wine (9)
I believe the answer is:
attentive
'careful' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'mother not starting to drink red wine' is the wordplay.
'mother' becomes 'native' (as in a native or mother tongue).
'not starting' means to remove the first letter.
'to drink' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'red wine' becomes 'tent' (type of Spanish wine).
'native' with its first letter taken off is 'ative'.
'ative' enclosing 'tent' is 'ATTENTIVE'.
(Other definitions for attentive that I've seen before include "Heedful, thoughtful" , "Alert; observant" , "Mindful" , "Concentrating; politely helpful" , "Taking notice" .)