How do you organize a wine tasting group in a hotel, restaurant, business premises or home?
Answers
I belong to several wine tasting groups in the UK, about half a dozen. I am also on the mailing list of wine festivals and events worldwide. Plus events organized by restaurants, bars, wine shops and the Wine Association. One of the groups meets in a restaurant in London. We match wines to food, which is pretty simple, starting with a sparkling white, drinking reds through the main course which is mostly stronger flavour meats, ending with sweet wines to go with dessert.
Details about wines and wine matching are on Grapedeal website. All website links are grouped at the end for you to turn to when you have finished reading this post.
Our group's organiser chose a Croydon restaurant, only as convenient for his home. He runs another company wine group based on his former workplace in central London. The Croydon venue attracts people from as far north of London as Watford, and as far out of London as Faversham in Kent.
Well-Travelled Members
The group attracts a complete mix of nationalities, from those whose parents are from the UK, to others descended from parents born in Germany, Italy, and the Cameroons in Africa. All are well travelled. One teaches on cruise ships. Others travel with work. Discussion over cocktails and lunch ranged from 'my recent trip to Valencia in Spain', to India, and Boston in the USA.
For many years this group met at a hotel in Croydon. Then a new manager apparently changed the rules about BYO (bring your own). We believe our leader negotiated better prices for a large group to meet at The Boulevard.
BYO
Wine societies are always looking for restaurants which allow BYO for specialist groups. Another factor is a set price for three courses with coffee including service. That makes it so much easier for the group organizer to book a table for a certain number and know what each person must pay.
The advantage to the restaurant is that they can regularly fill a large table and know what everybody will be paying, and no non-payers, and all customers are regulars and reliable.
BYO is very common in New Zealand.
In the UK, you can search online for BYO. Sometimes you get BYO in family-run restaurants, especially ethnic restaurants which don't specialise in wine. Another opportunity is from newly opened restaurants which don't yet have a license.
If you phone around, you may find that some places want to charge a prohibitive price for corkage; but others are very happy to charge nothing and just keen to get business to fill a back room or a large table lunchtime or evening, mid-week or weekend.
You might get a deal if you simply keep going through your list until you find somebody willing to meet your needs. The other advantage for a club is having an organizer who is retired and has time to research. Another option, a bonus, is a charming but canny negotiator.
Negotiating Skills
What does a negotiatior need? To enjoy researching. To compliment the chef, owner, hotel or restaurant or manager or staff. To work out what the restaurant wants, more business, to fill the place at off-peak hours, to build up business long-term, gain goodwill? To concentrate on the price per meal? To concentrate on the total which the restaurant will get?
To be easy-going or tough? Or to have two negotiatiors, Mr tough and Mr nice?
To get a free drink or for everybody attending, or a free meal for the organizer? To be a regular customer at the restaurant in addition to organizing the club? To compare what other restarants in the area or country offer, or what other groups are paying?
Pay Straight Away
If your diners only want one type of wine with the main course, you could have an arrangement that everybody pays cash or credit card at the time of ordering for aperitifs and for after dinner drinks.
However, many retired people have spent a lifetime collecting wines and have specialist wines which are no longer available and would not be sold in most restaurants.
The last two events I attended were for wine pairings. We compared two wines.
On one special occasion for a wedding anniversary we had twelve wine glasses per person for a table of about twelve people. You drink only a small measure of each.
Safety First
You don't drive home.You take a train or a taxi. You make sure somebody sober collects you from the station.
Leftovers
I didn't drink port or spirits. If you have leftovers they can be corked up and taken home.
Open Bottles Banned
Notice that opened bottles of wine or cans of beer are not allowed on some stations and trains in the UK. Signs may tell you.
Why would the powers that be do this? Are they just being spoilsports?
No. Rules and bye-laws are brought in to stop drunks lurching around, singing annoyingly, accosting passengers. Worse still, drunks could be being sick, urinating on walls, or onto electrical lines.
They might start fighting each other, or amusing offering to share drinks or alarmingly demanding drinks money from passengers. You don't want winos and down-and-outs sleeping on benches and underfoot, assaulting railway staff, and falling under trains. If it never happens, it's because the management and staff don't let it happen.
UK Responsibility
Many UK restaurant menus have warnings about units of alcohol and drinking responsibly. At one company wine club, the staff insisted that a visiting lecturer add a warning on the printed tasting notes.
USA
In the USA in some States, you cannot have opened bottles of wine in a car. One restaurant in the USA would not allow us to take home an opened bottle for this reason, they claimed.
Transporting Heavy Wines
If you have packing to prevent access to the bottles, and to keep them hidden inside a locked suitcase, and you are sober, or the person with the locked suitcase is sober, that would be better.
Transporting wines for a group of 12-36 people, or more, means moving heavy bottles. Sometimes the bottles can be delivered to the venue the previous day and kept in a locked cellar at the venue.
Leftover bottles
What about the leftovers? What a waste! At one event, two of the ladies took home a half bottle each to cook in a casserole. Empty bottles can be kept for display, or converted into table lamps, for fun, for gifts, for decoration at home in the kitchen or lounge, or restaurants in the wine bar or dining room, for a pub, for a museum, or for sale.
In Company Meetings
To accompany wine bread and biscuits and cheese are often supplied. However, this is an unbalanced meal with no fruit or vegetables. Guests may wish to bring grapes, or to ask for vegetables and fruit to be supplied.
Providing Water
Another consideration is the cost of water. A wine tasting group might be looking for a venue which will provide unlimited supplies of tap water, or bottled water, and not refuse to serve tap water nor insisting on supplying and charging for bottled water. Organisers want to keep down the costs and ensure that sufficient food and wine is supplied to keep patrons sober.
Useful websites
drinkaware.co.uk
grapedeal.com
visitbritain.com
visitbritainshop.com
visittheusa.com
www.newzealand.com
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker
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