With many years of wine education behind us and a relaxed, open attitude to tasting Dan and I will guide you through the basics of appreciating a wine with How to taste all the way to the ins and outs of sparkling wine production in rural France. We aim to get you to the point where you’ll be telling us all about what’s in your glass like a New York hipster in a salad bar.

How to taste                                                                      Weds 26^th of September               7:30pm – 9:30pm

Grape Varieties Red                                                       Weds 3^rd of October                       7:30pm – 9:30pm

Grape Varieties White                                                   Weds 10^th of October                     7:30pm – 9:30pm

France                                                                                  Weds 17^th of October                     7:30pm – 9:30pm

Spain & Italy                                                                       Weds 24^th of October                     7:30pm – 9:30pm

The Americas                                                                     Weds 31^st October                           7:30pm – 9:30pm

Australia, South Africa and New Zealand               Weds 7^th November                       7:30pm – 9:30pm

Champagne and Sparkling                                            Weds 14^th November                     7:30pm – 9:30pm

Tickets are £25 each, you can buy half the course (4 sessions) in one go for £90 or book the whole course for £160 saving you £40 on the individual session price. We’ll supply all the info, wine, sheets and things you may need. Due to space limitations, we will only be able to cram 10 people in at the most so if this sounds like your idea of fun get in touch as soon as you possibly can.

We cannot guarantee that attending our wine course will give you superpowers.

“Your friend, where is he?” The wine maker asked. I looked around, all I could see was a sea of leering chatting wine geeks. A carnival organ played dimly in the background and the room spun slowly. “Holy jesus,” I muttered “where am I?” and stumbled away.

Eventually I found the policy wonk. He’d propped himself up as far as possible from the natural wine and was deep in conversation. He noticed me and gave me what he probably thought was a sly wink. My first reaction was to think he was having a stroke.

“This is space gin made in a wendy house.” He announced solemnly, “And it’s going to change the world.”

I gave a panicked glance to the lady pouring the gins, she didn’t protest so I asked for a taste. Now this is the bit you’re probably not going to believe. I have drunk many gins in many countries. I have asked for gin and tonic even when surrounded by great manly men who care only for whisky and beer. I have sampled cloudy yellow jenevers served by a one armed Dutchman with a squint and a parrot. But this gin was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country-but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.

The utterly delicious Sacred gin, vodka and various other bits are now available. For less fanciful, more useful information that isn’t a horrendous pastiche of Hunter S Thompson visit their website:http://www.sacredspiritscompany.com/

Wine tastings can appear daunting from the outside: “How do you smell pineapple or forest floor in a wine? What does a gooseberry actually taste like? What do you mean by minerality? It just smells like wine!” Went the voice in my head when I first attended a tasting and I’m aware that this is what most people are thinking. The simple answer is that there are no words to describe smells of flavours except similes; by developing your own language of flavour you will be able to discuss and remember wines like a seasoned old pro in no time. We’re very happy to help you develop that skill and have trained and taught more people than would fit in a moderate village hall between us. Come to a tasting – empower your tastebuds!

Join our mailing list for tasting news (box on the left) or email me directly. Or even do a Bob Hoskins and give us a call. After all, it’s good to talk.

It was a bottle of Californian wine that got me into the wine trade. I was waiting, somewhat nervously in an Oddbins for my interview when a bottle caught my eye. It was Bonny Doon’s Cardinal Zin and the label was amazing – Ralph Steadman’s brooding homage to Velasquez , I read the tasting note and although I didn’t understand much of what was written I gathered that this was a good bottle. Towards the end of the interview I was asked what I liked the look of in the shop and after a couple of minutes of me gibbering about Cardinal Zin I got the job and a life in wine was assured.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that when I opened my own shop that  the wines of Bonny Doon would be on the shelf along with a focussed selection of my favourite Californian and American wineries. From the start the same things that first drew me to the wines did the same with our customers the striking labels, purity of fruit, elegance and balance.  The success we’ve had so far is encouraging given that we don’t have any Californian wines under £14.99,a not because we’re elitist rip-off merchants but because I haven’t found anything compellingly delicious for less and I believe that customers deserve rigour and passion from an independent wine store, not box ticking and pricepoint filling – we have supermarkets for that. Equally we don’t have a long list of jammy reds – I’d much prefer a wine that you can drink more than one glass of and California does this incredibly well: there is probably no region better at listening  to and learning from other wine makers. If you like high minerality southern Rhone reds, there’s plenty of Californians who have made it their life’s work to translate that into an American terroir, the same goes for any great and many minor wine styles and this generosity of spirit and willingness to listen makes for one of the most exciting wine producing regions in the world.

The journey that has taken me from a bottle of Bonny Doon Cardinal Zin, brought with my first pay check to the Bonny Doon Cigare Volante opened in celebration of my own shops opening has been extraordinary, who knows where my next bottle of Californian wine might take me?

It is often on the second day that I really start to like a wine. The first night always seems a little awkward, we need to get to know each other. It was like that with a Cotes du Rhone we decided to buy recently. I opened the bottle of Mas de Libian Bout d’Zan with Dan and a friend. I was rummaging around for a witty descriptor when Dan beat me to it. “Bovril. And maybe a touch of Oxo.” he declared. That was it, the poor wine was mortified and refused to do anything more than cower and taste of beef after that. So we regretfully put it to one side and carried on with the night.

The next day, the bottle was still on the side and we decided to see how it was doing.  Very well thank you was the answer – this was a different order of flavour altogether. Beautiful, pure, red cherry aromas leapt from the glass and the fruit was equally abundant when we sipped with a stirring growl of white pepper spice. The difference was astonishing, and had we not been so quick to move on the previous night we might have been able to observe the transition from beast to beauty.

Not all wines change so drastically, although low sulphur or screwcapped reds are the main contenders for Jeckyll and Hyde style transformations, but spending time with a wine and watching it change can bring real pleasure. Even over an evening – in my opinion it is always the last glass that is the most delicious – the one where the white is a bit warm and you’ve finished pudding and the coffee.

Well, yes, and plenty of people enjoy the result, just as plenty of people enjoy processed cheese or Angel Delight.

I’m not so keen, and many people aren’t.  There is a growing reaction to this – the natural wine movement. Natural wine is one of those storm in a teacup things that seems so vital and important when you’re in the middle of it and looks utterly inconsequential in the grand scheme of economic misery, environmental disaster, war and all the other cheering stuff that squats on the front pages. But anyway, for those of you who don’t assiduously read the wine blogs and Decanter magazine, natural wine is wine made with minimal additions – meaning that the winemaker has to be incredibly careful at every step. Some of these wines taste odd to a drinker not used to them– by not adding sulphur (an addition used since roman times) the wines can taste funky and weird, sometimes in an incredibly good way, sometimes less so…

There is a middle ground of course, where the wine in your glass is reliably good, isn’t full of crap and gives a sense of place, time and rootedness… It might not be on 3 for £10, but it doesn’t necessarily have to break the bank and it will satisfy you in a glorious way that only real wine can.