Wine Society Wine Tastings

Christmas trees outside provided a welcome and a free taste of c r e m a n t (sorry, auto correct tried to convert this to creamed. C r e m a n t is a sparkling white wine, not allowed to be called Champagne which is a French place name, and protected). This event was held n Stevenage but go to their website and you'll see they have paid for events all over Britain, sometimes in Europe, which despite the price are often sold out before I get to read the website. Luckily a member of my family is a member and takes me along, and gets news of events like the pre-Christmas tasting which is really hard to find on the website.

The Wine Society is a mutual society, a bit like the Co-op. It costs about £40 to join, and you get £20 back to spend on wines. Once or twice a year they have a free tasting of 10-20 of their wines. The Christmas tasting was free. If you can drive to Stevenage - or visit a friend or stay in a hotel overnight, it's a lot of fun. Some people drive all the way from the south coast of England or down from the Midlands.

A lot of people live in London and zoom up the motorway and back. One person has to be at the designated driver who knows how to taste and spit into a spittoon. If you are not drinking at all, or even if you are, the foods appear within an hour of the start of the tasting. It was from 4 pm to 6 pm, so not for those who work, unless you take time off work, hence a lot of white haired couples, plus a lot of young couples and solo beards.

The Christmas special foods are not on sale other times of year so it's a treat to try them and a chance to buy them. Everyone has different tastes. Others were enthusing about the pates, venison, rabbit, boar. (I'm a chicken liver pate person and none of the pates appealed to me.) But I was impressed by the cheddar cheese, and the honeycomb in chocolate, and the chocolates.

I loved the huge salted almonds. I've never seen such large almonds. The ones in supermarkets the world over are much smaller.

You can buy lots of novelties as gifts. Plum pudding (Christmas pudding), sticky toffee pudding, parkins (a northern biscuit - more details and recipes in Wikipedia and on other websites), tins.

Plus the expected wine glasses, bottle openers and novelties. Our purchase was the balls for cleaning the inside of a decanter or a wine bottle or plastic bottle you use for carrying small amounts of wine. (How does it work? You roll the balls about then empty them out.)

The Stevenage shop and tasting room has two Enomatic machines. The free tasting section is turned off during the free tastings. You don't need it since you are trying the half dozen or dozen wines they are offering and have in stock.

You can still use the paid for machine. The price for the teeny tastes is less than similar machines in shops in central London. The Wine Society has bin ends in a separate room of more expensive and unusual wines. But the vast majority in the main room start from bargain hunter or average person friendly prices.

For example, you might try a taste of a wine from the machine, at just 45p. Contrast that with a shop in Kensington, London, where you might pay £30 for a tasting of a wine costing hundreds of pounds which you would never otherwise get to taste. (I had a sip of one of those very expensive wines from somebody else's glass in central London, and it was wasted on me. The Wine Society is just right for me.)

Whilst I was there, I looked at some of the special sections. One was on English wine and rosé wine. The English wine I noticed was Three Choirs. Many people in Europe are surprised that England has even one vineyard or commercially produced wine.

The staff are all very helpful and knowledgeable. You can ask them anything you like. (Not, 'Are you married or single?'!) You can ask: 'Which food goes with this wine?')

More details from:
Thewinesociety.com

Photos by Angela Lansbury, copyright 2016.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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