Wine Clubs And Wine Tasting Events, Alcohol and No Alcohol Around Britain

Angela Lansbury trying Grenache Rose from a can at a show. 

Wine Clubs

Near Trafalgar Square, about half way between Charing Cross and Embankment stations, an easy 5 minute walk from each, is the Civil Service Club which is the venue for the Central London Wine Club. They meet the second and fourth Wednesday evenings each month and are open to guests. No need to be a member of the Civil service or its club. Just book and pay though their website. (New website from November 20th. Like all theatres and other places of entertainment, you pay in advance to reserve your seat in a place where seats are limited by fire regulations. Also for wine clubs, unlike restaurants, the number of bottles ordered depends on the numbers signing up.

If you want a venue with unlimited wine stocks, the ideal venue is a restaurant, but they mostly charge corkage, so the organizers have to budget carefully. Turning up with a magnum might involve the hosts in more changes. An alternative is a members' club with cellars, like 67 Pall Mall, where you pay a joining fee and a montly or annual fee.

Other wine clubs in London and the home counties which I have attended include wine clubs in St Albans and Welwyn, which attract people who live in those areas. Put into a search engine the name of your location and the word wine club and see what comes up. Very useful if you live in a new area and want to meet friends. 

Some clubs attract young people. Others attract the retired. Or a mixture.

Restaurants & Shops Tastings & Themed Evenings

Many restaurants, bars, and pubs, and wine shops have evenings based on wines from a particular country, or season. Also embassies, promoting the wines and vineyards of their country. If you attend one of these events, you are likely to meet somebody from the local area or further afield. You might get invited to an event, or meet somebody interesting in attending a wine club you start, or in helping you to organize a meeting.

If you attend a trade fair for a country, or hospitality, for luxury travel, or group travel, or a wedding fair, you might meet suppliers of sparkling wines, low alcohol and no alcohol wines, mixers, spirits and juices.

Those attending might include owners of wineyards, winemakers, owners of bars and restaurants, sommeliers and head waiters, students of wine (not necessarily youngsters) people celebrating weddings and anniversaries.

Suppliers of wine such as Berry brothers also have wine tastings before Christmas and at intervals throughout the year.

If you order a case of wine, or even do an internet search, you might be sent useful advertisements and invitations and information about wine events and societies. 

WSET

WSET runs courses for the interest of amateur enthusiasts, sommeliers, and those specializing in sake.

Wine clubs have also been started by members of big businesses such as banks. You might find that your company already has a wine society. Or if there is a newsletter, you might be able to start one. It is a good way to network with others in your company, or to network if the club is open to guests and outside members.

Why would you need to give your details or pay money in advance? First of all, for the security of the venue, and the event. Secondly, to ensure there is enough wine, water, crackers, bread, or food, for all attending. Thirdly, you need enough wine glasses. Even if the event is bring a bottle, if ten people each bring a bottle, you either need a tasting sheet to provide information and enable people to note which wine they liked, or enough glasses of different types.

What if the event provides no food, or asks you to bring your own wine glasses?

Big events open either to trade only, or to anybody willing to pay, are held at major stadiums, in London at Olympia, and Excel. In Singapore a popular venue is Expo. Get on their mailing list. You can also look at Eventbrite and Meetup.

If you order wine by the case, for a wedding, anniversary, birthday, housewarming, club Xmas party, you might be able to hire for a fee, or free, glasses from major wine shops or warehouses. You then get on their list invited to tastings or events.

Another option is to join the Wine Society. You can then visit their huge shop in Stevenage has large selections of wine bottles. You can join online in advance for about forty pounds which gives you a discount towards your first purchase. 

For the driver of your car, there will be water, or a coffee machine. And toilets. And at Christmas chocolates in gift boxes, and other snacks and gifts. 

My husband and I have attended several lunches. At one of them we made permanent friends of another couple who meet us in London to have lunch at an art gallery.

Before driving all that way, to Stevenage, check their opening times and events. It may be possible to ask a member to take you in as a guest, or to stop at the cashier and pay for membership on arrival, without waiting, but please check the latest regulations of the society, and the UK laws on club membership and drink driving.

No Alcohol Drinks

For non drinkers, it is very handy to see the variety of low alcohol and no alcohol drinks which you can give to drivers and non drinkers, and people on pills for temporary or permanent conditions. You can now buy no alcohol wines, beers, ciders, and decaffeinated teas, and coffees.

Alcohol In Food And Drink

Keeping informed about spirits in food is also handy. For example, you might see alcohol in the list of ingredients in Christmas pudding and other dishes which you wish to buy or serve. The same applies when you look at menus or get served in restaurants or people's home, when you responsible for events serving adults or children. 

Useful Websites On Wine And Events (alphabetically)

Central London Wine Society

https://www.67pallmall.com/

wine@clws.org.uk

Berry Brothers & Rudd

https://www.bbr.com/events-and-experiences

Decanter

https://events.decanter.com/london/your-details

The Wine Society

https://www.thewinesociety.com/

WSET

https://www.wsetglobal.com/wset-school-london

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British and international themes for parties, clubs, tourists

From British Banbury cakes to Canadian maple syrup biscuits, there's always something new to try eating or making or buying.

By mid October people in the UK and worldwide are planning the dates and menus for Christmas and end of year parties. Many clubs are planning the calendar for the club's year ahead, which will be given out or announced at the end of the year party, before everybody disappears for Christmas holidays and New Year holidays, so they know when to be back for the January events.

We recently made Banbury cakes to use up leftover pastry. We just looked in our fruit bowl and fridge to see what we had and googled recipes. If you are booking or buying for a small British dinner party or large, themed party, consider supplying:

Eccles cake. Pic from Wikipedia.

British Food to buy, make, serve
A few ideas: Yorkshire pudding as a savoury with beef. Banbury cakes, Eccles cakes, parkins, Bakewell tart, Bakewell pudding. For Easter, hot cross buns. For Christmas, mince pies.


Sampling Wine and Mince Pies
In the UK restaurants and wine bars are already ordering in mince pies to be served as part of the menu or a free addition at the end of a meal or served with wine. Berry Brothers wine shop in central London, near Piccadilly Circus, they told me this week, has just ordered mince pies.

You might want to arrange an event with a theme for a club or group. For example, for a birthday.

Singapore's Hash Harriers Birthday Boy Choice
In Singapore the Hash House Harriers, a group of jungle running ex-pats, has runs set by somebody whose birthday is the same week or month. The birthday boy chooses the menu which is themed and with food from their home country, such as fish and chips from the UK, curries from India, Chinese food from China and so on. If somebody else of the same nationality had chosen your favourite food the previous week, you have to be more inventive. Its's all fun to introduce new things.

Singapore National Themes
In Singapore at meetings when there is no birthday person, they also hold a seasonal theme for national days. If you have a club, you could plan your year ahead with national days. You might hold your running circuit around a church or temple and/or hold the end of evening meal at a place such as Singapore Danish Seamen's Church.

Other ideas, a Russian orthodox church, a Chinese or Indian temple, a French language centre, a Japanese Club, a Polish centre.

If you can't organize a venue and a Chinese or Indian restaurant (usually plenty of those so it's easy to organize One of Singapore's lady's run nights ends at a Chinese restaurant. Chinese restaurants are a budget choice if people are all paying for themselves. I also went to a Chinese restaurant with a speakers' group in Hong Kong.

Christmas Potluck
At Harrovians (Toastmasters' International) Speakers Club we have a Christmas potluck party and most people bring along their own national food, savouries such as British cheeses, French cheeses, and desserts such as as mince pies from the UK. Stollen comes from Germany, with its marzipan centre.

Hanukah Food
At Harrovians we have had a seasonal December party, with Hanukah and Christmas foods. Hanukah foods include: Savouries: brisket (a cheap fatty cut of beef plus potato latkes (grated potato patties, fried, round or triangular, like Swiss Rosti which is made big and pan sized and cut into portions, and American hash browns which are individual portions). Sweet desserts: doughnuts (sufganiyot) are requirements. noodle kugel and, of course, latkes and doughnuts

Italian Pandoro
Last year, pandoro, (which I had seen and sampled find in Italian restaurants and cafes in London, England, as well as supermarkets), was brought, provided by a Venezuelan member. I learned that pandora is found, not just in Italy but, also Spanish speaking countries.

Why else would you serve British food, other national food, or multi-national food? To welcome somebody from the UK, or to organize a farewell party for a colleague going to the UK.

A themed party might attract visitors and involve helpers to raise money for charity, such as a fundraising tea, or a coffee morning. You could ask two or three people or the whole group to bring along to a potluck party a food from the UK.

A packet of biscuits from your home country would also be welcome at an event if you are given a lift (in America you would say, given a ride), or are invited to a free event.

A Canadian visitor to London, UK, gave our Harrovian Toastmasters group maple syrup biscuits. I was intrigued by the flavour, the shape, with the leaf pattern stamped on the top.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

WINE: Berry Brothers Wine Tastings - Matching Wine and Chocolate

For an anniversary treat we went to Berry Brothers near the Ritz Hotel in London for a pre-booked wine and chocolate event. Another charming, chatty couple from Leicester had been given tickets by their lovely daughter-in-law as a Christmas gift.

From the shop upstairs we are led down to the cellars where we start with a glass of sparking pink wine. I looked at the cartoons on the walls about wine.  

This event is about matching wine and chocolate. Here's real cocoa before it's turned into chocolate.

The end product - a special chocolate. The one on the left has citrus flavour. The one on the right is Earl Grey flavour (with the magic flavour of bergamot I presume).  

I learned that after eating different foods and drinking different drinks you go back to a wine you liked and thought was sweet and find it tastes quite different. Also lemon is as great an additional flavour to chocolate as orange.

Which Wines Should I Serve At My Home Dinner Party?

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Champagne Quotations -
'In victory you deserve it, in defeat you need it.' Napoleon. (I used to worry about quoting quotations accurately. Then I found that famous people who found a witty line went down well would repeat it many times, differently each time. Misquotations are usually more succinct and sound better than the original.
Many famous quotations are translated from the original French in different English words.
I am a happy drinker and a happy wine writer.
Best quotations on drinks and Champagne? I dream of champagne. And making witty remarks about champagne. After a glass of champagne I have sweet dreams and think I have made witty remarks. I have to write down witty remarks, otherwise next day I just have a forgotten dream and big smile. See my book at the end. Now onto a beginner's guide to which wine to serve at your dinner party.

Wine Expert's Advice On Which Wine To Serve
Travelling Trevor is fast becoming a wine expert as a result of the wine tasting lunches, dinners, and evenings, at Berry Brothers near Piccadilly, where he is often sat (I mean that correctly in the passive sense - seated by others) beside the vineyard owner. The vineyard owner often challenges you to guess the grape ('hm - not too sweet, a little dry, only been in the vat xx years, slightly acidic' - so the year? ('wine going brown - may be older').  Trevor often identifies the grape and country and gets the year right or almost right within a year.

Trevor also visits to the Wine Society tastings, consults the wine guidebooks, reads the history of the vineyards, google maps show which bank of the river has the slope getting sun or rain. After years of tours around wine areas of Champagne, Germany, USA, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, now this year he visited Burgundy vineyards and stayed overnight taking photos for them and was rewarded by tastings of unusual wines. (He's an award-winning photographer - in the shortlist for a National Geographic stills competition and and outright winner for a video Boris in London competitions). We have also bought the 'bargain' (reduced price but still a luxury - but including wines you could never normally afford) at Petrus restaurant in London - Petrus being the name of a wine.

When we manage to gather friends from all corners of the globe in Singapore, or the family all meet up in London, we try to have two wines of the same type, but usually a cheap wine and an expensive wine, to compare. We all do a blind tasting and make notes on which wine we prefer, and guess which is the expensive one and which is the cheap one. Then Trevor reveals the labels and prices.

Alas, I'm only just learning to like the tanniny reds and acidic whites. I'm still willing to drink Portuguese Mateus Rose, though German Liebraumilch and Italian Asti Spumante (town of Asti, spumante meaning sparkling) are starting to taste like lemonade and make me wonder whether I am heading for diabetes with too much wine and sugar. So I try to limit myself to one glass with a meal, maximum two.

However, on special occasions I still look for a glass of French Champagne or Italian Prosecco or Californian sparkling rose, a zinfandel, plus a teeny tumbler of an after dinner Muscat. My eyes light up at really sweet wines, German Auslese, Spatlese (spat - late, like me, late but sweet) or a New World Icewine from the USA or even New Zealand.

But when Trevor is emailed by another younger member of the family for advice on which wine to serve at home-cooked dinner party, Trevor says with more authority:

Dinner Party Pairings

Re your dinner, any red wine goes fine with any red meat.  The matches we’ve been trying (mustard with Burgundy, pepper steak with Syrah etc) seem to me no more than interesting experiments.  My preference would be to match lighter meat (lamb) with lighter, fruitier wine (Beaujolais, Burgundy, Rioja or Chateau Musar).  Hold the Bordeaux, Syrah and Italian for steak.

No need for wine with desert (it would have to be a sweet wine though – sweet white if fruit-based, sweet red with chocolate).

Cheese is fussier.  Soft white cheeses, including goat, go very well with well-chilled Sauvignon Blanc.  For waxy yellow cheese like Dutch or Emmental I have yet to find a wine that works.  Hard, crumbly, yellow cheeses like cheddar, manchego and pecorino need a red wine and mature examples can soften any amount of tannin.  Blue cheese like Stilton is famously paired with port (salt vs sweet) but I think it’s too much richness altogether, would just enjoy the cheese.

Love These Links:

Berry Brothers and Rudd Shop, 3 St James's Street, London

Berrys Bros & Rudd
3 St James's Street
London SW1A 1EG
Tel:+44 (0)800 280 2440

Email: bbr@bbr.com

Frequent seated lunches and dinners can be very pricey but you still need to book early because they sell out fast.

Bin end shop Basingstoke (frequent tasting mornings with tutoring sessions for a small price about £5-10)

Berry Bros. & Rudd Hamilton Close Houndmills Basingstoke Hampshire RG21 6YB

www.bbr.com

thewinesociety.com (Wine tastings for members - you can join - it's a public co-op, and they sell wines, bargain bin ends, and glasses, books on wine and wine theme tea towels.) 

Angela's Wine Glass Etiquette and After Dinner Quotations:
Watch Angela Lansbury on restaurant etiquette on you tube

Buy books by Angela Lansbury on speeches and Quick Quotations For Successful Speeches, for after dinner speeches on lulu.com

'When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.' (Henry Youngman, 1906-1998.)
'If this is tea, bring me coffee, if this is coffee, bring me tea.' Abraham Lincoln.

Send offers of free dinners and news of wine tastings (press, public or personal).

Invitations to free dinners and wine tastings are accepted with blushes or gratifying (to you) and embarrassing (to me) eagerness! 
My email is annalondon8@gmail.com (I am not Anna but Angela. tried to get 'Angela London and a number but several others already had the same idea. However, I managed to snap up the Chinese 'lucky number' 8.)