Nyetimber English Wine At Hedonism Shop London

 

Big basket with the wine producer's name Nyetimber, for new wood.

Nyetimber event at Hedonism wine shop in central London. Photos by Trevor Sharot.

Big basket with the wine company name Nyetimber, deck chairs and red and white gingham.

The event on Tuesday July 8th 2025 was ice cream matched with wine.

Useful websites

Nyetimber

Hedonism

-ends-

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Vineyards to visit and English wines to buy: Tinwood and Gusbourne, Nyetimber

We drove from London to Bognor Regis on the coast of West Sussex. As we neared the coast, we passed signs to wineries. I am now researching wineries so we can do a circular vineyard tour with lunch at a winery and visit to two or three winery shops.

On previous occasions we have visited Nyetimber, which has a stunning setting overlooking the valley. 

Going  west , we also visited a vineyard in Wales. 

Denbies had a wonderful outdoor vineyard tour, and indoor tour, . Their huge supermarket of wines and wine related souvenirs was great. The smart restaurant, where we had booked a table for four for lunch, for entertaining an overseas visitor, was the final perfect touch.

England produces sparkling white wines. From grapes grown on the same chalk that stretches down to the French Champagne region.

Gusborne

Free self guided tour of the winery.

Tinwood

Accommodation in one of three lodges.

Cream tea with each of their three sparkling wines at about fifty pounds.

Useful Websites

Denbies

https://www.denbies.co.uk/tours-and-experiences/

https://www.gusbourne.com/visits/new

https://www.gusbourne.com/tours

Nyetimber

https://nyetimber.com/shop/

https://nyetimber.com/nyetimber-vineyard-open-days/

Tinwood

https://www.tinwoodestate.com/shop/

https://www.tinwoodestate.com/the-vineyards/vineyard-tours/

Royal Wedding Countdown - what to wear and eat, British style, out or at home

Windsor and Eton with crown decoration. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

This is the street decoration for Christmas. You can bet there will be street decorations just as fine for a royal wedding. At the end of the street you can see Windsor Castle.

Problem
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wedding - what happens when? I don't want to miss any of it. Dress in your best to enjoy the day. What will you wear? The date is Saturday May 19 and in England we say, Ne'er cast a clout til may be out, meaning the sun may be out but it could still be chilly.

Answer
Windsor in Berkshire is expecting more than 100,000 people and if you go there security will be tight, so you may be stopped and searched or wait in line whilst others are checked. If you are not one of the 600 guests viewing the wedding in St George's Chapel, you could still see the carriage procession.

If you decide to go to Windsor before or after the event, you can see the wonderful castle which dominates Windsor and Eton which are two sides of the river.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, photo by Mark Jones in Wikipedia.

The Countdown
11.30 Sit down by the TV in a comfortable chair with a glass of Champagne, Cava or Prosecco, or something British such as cider, Scotch whisky, or an English white wine from one of England's many vineyards such as Denbies or Nyetimber.

What To Eat - Main Course
What could you eat? Something British. If you are out in the street, get a takeaway, fish and chips.

My favourite pubs/ The Wetherspoon chain. Lots of choice of food and drink. Lots of bargains.

My second choice? A carvery.

At home for lunch or supper? How about roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Roast potatoes. Brussel sprouts.

Buy British
You should find something in Marks & Spencer, Tescos, Waitrose, Sainsbury's or Morrisons, all British. (Or, for cheaper prices, opt for Aldi, Lidl and sandwiches from Poundshop and Boots the chemist.

British Desserts
At a pub in Eton, I ordered a dessert called Eton mess, which is broken up meringues (looks a mess but tastes declicious) with strawberries and cream.

For less sugar, more fruit, after your main course, order or make apple crumble with yellow custard.

Between Meals
Perhaps a healthy snack of an apple, a British apple, Cox's orange pippin.

At tea time you could have homemade scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam.

Timing
12 noon, the Ceremony starts. This should take about an hour.

The wedding reception will take place in Windsor Castle.

Later that day there's a sporting event, maybe involving the royals. At 5.30 it's kick off time for the FA (Football Association) cup finals. Prince William usually presents the prize, but it's not certain where he will be.

However, you can bet the pubs with TVs will be busy with screens turned on and special flags and bunting and special offers on drinks and food.

You can't wait until May? The couple will be visiting other places in the UK, notably on Friday April 6th 2018 in Bath, England, at the trials for the Invictus games in Sydney Australia. HRH Prince Harry is patron.

Invictus, you may recall, is a poem, one of my favourites. (More Invictus games in Sydney, Australia in October 2018.)

Booking a British Break
You have still time to book a flight to England, or postpone a trip from England to elsewhere, or come home early.

Angela Lansbury at a souvenir shop in Heathrow airport, London, England, UK, standing behind a cutout of HM THe Queen. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright. 

Useful Websites

https://www.visitbritainshop.com/world/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwnfLVBRCxARIsAPvl82GP69PmU8JypOxaHH_UHQUjjtuE47vI1wGfGlU2pqkIdYBrRy3OpLgaAvT5EALw_wcB

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5558081/30million-ring-steel-protect-Prince-Harry-Meghan-Markles-wedding.html

https://www.invictusgames2018.org (Sydney, Australia.)

https://www.teambath.com/2018/03/28/invictus-games-trials/ (Bath, England.)

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Preparing For The Party: H M The Queen's 90th birthday

In case you'd forgotten, the queen's 90th birthday is coming up. Celebrated in Britain and no doubt around the world. Any excuse for a party, especially if you support or are fascinated by the royal family. The supermarkets have kindly reminded us to prepare. 

Waitrose has an iced fruit cake, decorated with a yellow crown, the letters ER, the number 90.  Around the edge of the cake red and blue bunting.

It costs £10, is vegetarian with lots of organic ingredients. You can read the ingredients on the Waitrose website, though they do warn that recipes change so check the ingredients in store if buying in store. 

If you were wondering about making your own centrepiece cake, or individual teacakes to match the central cake, here are some ideas for colouring and motifs.

To celebrate or picnic at home, a great offer on English sparking wine by award winning Nyetimber. We stood by the offer checking online for the usual price, the year, the maker, and our own stocks of wine. (If you have a short memory, keep last week's shopping list.)

An article about Nyetimber is in this week's Weekender free newspaper from Waitrose which you can pick up in the store. (Lots of great articles. My favourites from this issue were on tracking whether you have hedgehogs in your garden with a hedgehog tunnel which records hedgehog footprints. Another article features looking after bats.

Twinning tea tin with patriotic red, white and blue design.

To carry home or store your goodies and tea time treats, a bag featuring tea pots.

Another design of bag, this time more red.

My experience is that you need plain coloured clothes to go with a patterned bag, plain bags to go with patterned clothes. So if you are buying a red white and blue bag, look out your plain red, plain white, or plain blue dress or travelling outfit. I just bought a white baseball hat which goes with everything.

When is it? Thursday 21st May, but H M THE QUEEN will be performing walkabouts the day before.The place to be, or watch on TV, is Windsor. Expect the queen to walk about, and horse guards in a pageant.

More information from:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36025967 (Details of the Queen's events.)
http://www.waitrose.com/shop/DisplayProductFlyout?productId=497938#BVRRContainer (cake)

http://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/2016040130677/the-queen-90th-birthday-plans/

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

London Wine Fair - my favourite pictures ; plum, mulled wine, squirrels and Marilyn Monroe

Nyetimber bus. Of course as it's a London wine fair I have to start with a wonderful award winning wine from England.

Wine and Spirit Education Trust. A reminder of what I learned on my Level One course. How different wines paired with lemon or cheese or a sweet such as marshmallow will taste differently.

The free massage. Of course they want to sell you the machine at £149. The massage was really good, like three rotating golf balls either side of your neck or back or wherever you put the machine.

Speakers Corner

The audience members did blind tasting trying to guess the wine, whilst so did the speaker, Joe Wadsack. He told us what he looked for when guessing which wine it was. Red or white grape? Which grape? Aromatic or not? Which flavour? Tannic or acidic? From warm or cool climate country? If you can identify the grape, you know where it is likely to come from. Oak aged or not? My favourite wine was the sparkling white sweet Nyetimber wine, from England.

Origin colourful bottles and a stand with a tree. A major exporter from South Africa, now expending and innovating with wines sourced from other countries.

Plum wine from Japan on the stand showing Sake.

Red Squirrel wine. The rare red squirrel is beloved by the British. A recently set up company, 2012, specialise in importing unusual wines with unusual packaging.

Marilyn Monroe on label

Mulled wine from Forest Glow gives you a warm glow. (They were also smart enough to offer a free tasting of something on a cracker - a good move at wine fairs and in pubs, found everywhere at Tapas bars in Spain, and increasingly popular in England. Some people are willing to pay. Pubs which offer mulled wine and free food before lunch on Sundays in England in winter time are packed with drinkers who stay on to drink wine and dine.) 

Their wine is from Sweden, Europe, blended with fruit and flowers and spices.

More information from:

Nyetimber wine www.nyetimber.com

WSET Wine and Spirit Eduction Trust www.wsetglobal.com

Massager: www.begate.co.uk

http://www.marilynwines.com/WINES/MARILYN-MERLOT

Origin wines: www.origin

Plum wine and sake: Daishchi Sake Brewery Co Ltd 

Red Squirrel Wine: www.redsquirrelwine.agency

Mulled wine from Sweden: A Taste Of Ltd / Forest Glow www.forestglow.co.uk

If you are in the trade and missed this event, or want to read about the next one, it will be the 37th London Wine Fair, 22nd to 24th May 2017, again at Olympia, London, England. 

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

Map of the Vineyards of England and Wales

I saw this map on the wall of The Butlers Wine Cellar Limited in Queen's Park Road, Brighton, when we went in there to buy some wine. I asked where they got the map and said I wanted to know because I'd like one. This is the 2011 edition and out of date which cost £2.95. Helpful Mike in the shop posted me an old copy as he had a spare one. I thought it would arrive in a tube but it packed flat into an A5 envelope with a first class stamp. Thank you, Mike!

I'll be reading it and listing places to visit and checking online to see the places still exist and get updates. So come back later to find out what I've found out.

Would you believe by the time this map was printed in 2011 we already had 160 vineyards in England. Another seven in Wales. And global warming is good news for wine growers in the UK.

I have written earlier posts about visiting vineyards.  Denbies has a big, bustling building offering indoor and outdoor tours, a shop adjoining the ground floor cafe, plus a smart upstairs restaurant. 

Nyetimber is even more picturesque. It was open only intermittently for odd days in 2014 but plans to open more often later next year.  I also tried wine tasting at a bustling vineyard complex in Wales which has a restaurant, a bar, outdoor seating for eating in good weather, a shop and accommodation.

Speaking of English and Welsh wine, do you know the difference between English and British wines? England now has protected status for geographical locations. But a British wine can be a blend, not even grown in England, but blended and bottled somewhere in Britain.

Butler's Wine Cellar Ltd

247 Queens Park Road, Brighton BN2 9X.

Tel: 01273 698 724.

www.butlers-winecellar.co.uk

An online map of vineyards:

http://ukvineyards.co.uk/vineyards-map/

More Associations:

www.drinkaware.co.uk

www.drinkbritain.com

www.englishwine.com

www.englishsparklingwine.com

www.englishwineproducers.com

www.sparklingenglishwine.com

www.ukva.org.uk (UK Vineyards Association)

www.wineguilduk.org

Angela Lansbury, author, travel writer, speaker.

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Loos of the world, London loos and toilet tours

The Romans idea of toilets was rather communal, as you can see if you visit Vindolanda at Hadrian's Wall.

If you are a tourist visiting the UK, where should you not relieve yourself? Not on the side of the airport terminal building. Not on a war memorial.

Where can you go? The usual system is to stop for a coffee or snack and use the toilet. Or go into a shopping mall and use the public toilet.

On a motorway, large numbers of cubicles.

In France you can use a toilet in any bar as well as asking for a glass of water to drink.
Most large hotels won't mind if you are well dressed and ask the way politely and look at their cafe menu and browse in their shop.

LONDON LOO TOUR
A tour guide called Rachel Erickson runs Loo Tours of London. Here's the link to the BBC video about her.
bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27486586?post_id=698460596_10154644904150597#_=_
lootours.com

LOO BOOKS
When browsing in a big bookshop, you might buy a souvenir book about toilets.
Some books on loos?

Toilets of the World

How to Shit In The Woods

A book on mishaps:
Up Shit Creek: Collection of Horrifyingly True Toilet Misadventures by Joe Lindsay

And my favourite loos, London and worldwide?

London's Best Loos?
The ladies at Hedonism wine shop in Mayfair. A TV screen giving you the latest news.

The door is not marked. It's next to the downstairs tasting room and there for people who've sat drinking at their tastings.

UK Toilets

At Hadrian's wall a Roman tourist attraction shows the Roman toilet, a row of seats, holes, in a long platform. You can buy pictures of it.

Garages and service station malls on UK motorways have free toilets.

In London the one on Euston station charges money.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet

The Harrow at Little Bedwyn restaurant, Ladies. Individual cloth to dry your hands. 

You could copy this idea for meetings inexpensively with a set of three facecloths for £1 from the Poundshop or similar in most UK high streets, plus any round or square box, with a basket on the floor for the used towels.

The Harrow at Little Bedwyn Restaurant, Ladies toilet. How jolly.

Singapore Toilets
Grandest toilets and bathrooms are in the five star hotels.

The grandest toilets are in top hotels and restaurants.

Slimline cistern on modern toilet at Restaurant Tristan in Horsham.

Temporary toilets can be hired for events. This grand version for a wine tasting at Nyetimber vineyards has a painting about the toilet in a cubicle in the ladies.

ASIA
Malaysia
Grandest toilet in the central top hotel with a flushing device inside the toilet so you can wash yourself before (physically) and aft (physically),  and after (timewise).

These toilets sold by the Japanese can also be bought in the UK. Saves space if you don't have room for a bidet and only one device to clean, not two.

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What a vineyard tour teaches you about red and white wine and sparkling wines

I need to know about wines for my level one exam. So here's a recap to help me and you.

Blanc is white (in French). Noir is black. White and black grapes.

Blanc de blanc (on the bottle label) is white wine from white grapes only, chardonnay the white grape.

Much rarer is
Blanc de noir which is white wine made from a black skinned grape which nonetheless has a clear colour juice.

The most usual black skinned grape juice added for a mixed grape sparkling will be pinot noir.

Pinot grapes come in three well known varieties, pinot blanc (white), pinot gris (grey), and pinot noir (black).

What about pinot meunier added by Nyetimber to one of their blends?


It is known is 'm e u n i e r' for short, because there are several pinots but only one m e u n i e r. I have had to insert spaces because the spell checker keeps changing the word to meaner.

So there are several Pinots.

Most champagne is brut - the driest.

Nyetimber Wines

Nyetimber vineyards are open to the public only on special days when they conduct tours. I've known about their wines for a long time but not until visited them for a tasting on the open day did I realise that they are in more than one location.

If you are in the business you might get a complimentary invitation, or if you are a frequent visitor to a local restaurant which features their wines, but members of the public were also invited to apply for tickets on line for £20 per person which included tasting three of their wines and you could use your ticket for a discount if you then ordered wine at the event. There was no refund on tickets so if you are likely to be working at that weekend or to cancel for any reason, don't risk it. However, even on a dull day it was well wroth the trip to see the vineyard, the delightful buildings, hear the talk, meet the people, try the wines, and get the voucher.

Leave your high heeled shoes behind in the car. You need walking shoes or wellies to walk along the stoney uneven ground with occasional muddy sections.

Sommeliers in restaurants in England and worldwide and others who work in shops, warehouses and sales and distribution in the wine trade take WSET exams. Right at the beginning you learn about the grapes in wines. For the WSET (wine and spirit education trust - two members of my family are taking different levels - me only level one - another member of my family several levels higher, diploma level). So the first thing I heard was Champagne is Chardonnay - plus pinot noir. It's dry white wine from a green grape, with a little extra livening up from a black grape, pinor noir, noir being French for black.

The black skins add the vibrant red colour to red wines but also the taste of tannin which some don't like. Remove some of the skin and you get rose wine.

However, many times I heard that, I tended to forget. But you remember it instantly after visiting the Nyetimber vineyard. First you see Chardonnay the main green grape used in sparkling wines.

(Sparkling wines include the king of sparkling wines, Champagne, a region of France - traditionally only wines from that country and that region - or possibly in our times and in the future new world areas owned or licensed by a Champagne house).  But now Nyetimber has challenged themselves and others to produce top quality sparkling wines, coming out equal to or better than some of the Champagnes, at some blind tastings in shows, and depending on your taste as a tester or consumer.

The well-kept vineyards.

The area features in the Domesday book and the name Nyetimber means new timber or new wood, as in the nearby New Forest on the South Coast. 

Later, Henry the VIII figures in the history. On the estate are genuine old buildings in which the family lives and works. 

The old barn has been beautifully renovated in sparkling clean white inside. The owners got married here and hope it will be popular when they open it for weddings. 

Everything is elegant.

They add to the green grape, Chardonnay, two black grapes, Pinor Noir and another Pinot, Pinot Meunier.

I'd heard that grapes for wine are often not suitable for eating. I and a couple of other people tried tasting a green and black grape. They are small and rather tasteless when not yet ripe for picking. Not horrible and bitter as I had imagined, but not nice eough for me to want a second. 

But the grapes are good enough for the local badgers. Nyetimber say they are lucky enough not to be plagued by local birds nor flocks flying in. Local farmers' sheep are invited in to graze on the grass which is a win win season, food for the farmer's sheep, and saves diesel and wages and time of people who would otherwise have to cut the grass.

Where can you taste Nyetimber? If you are local, I can recommend Restaurant Tristan in Horsham where we went for lunch. (See my post on the restaurant, which is also recommended by many people on Tripadvisor and rated in the Michelin Guide.)

If you are in London or the rest or England, many top restaurants as well as theatres and concert halls. Overseas Nyetimber is expanding to Denmark and Japan and seeking distribution in more countries. You can also buy bottles in Britain in Majestic wine suppliers and Waitrose supermarkets.

http://nyetimber.com/where-to-buy/

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Visiting British vineyards: Denbies and Nyetimber British Wine

Here's my wish list of vineyards to visit in Britain. Surprising as it may seen to those in those in other countries, England has a growing (excuse the pun) wine industry. You can visit vineyards, buy the wines on site or at supermarkets, dine in restaurants and shop in gift shops. Here are a few:

England

Nyetimber
Nyetimber.com
Video about their vineyard.
Their wines are available in restaurants near their vineyards such as Tristan in Horsham as well as London theatres and concert halls.

More about Nyetimber in my later post after my visit.

Tasting at Nyetimber in the barn.

Denbies
Denbies has a restaurant and gift shop.
Denbies Wine Estate
London Road
Dorking
Surrey RH5 6AA
http://www.denbies.co.uk/visit-us/

Wales

http://www.glyndwrvineyard.co.uk

Llanerch Vineyard Restaurant, Llanerch Vineyard, Hensol CF72 8GG, Wales

Newspaper article online:

http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/may/21/english-wines-vineyard-stays-uk

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/travellers-guide-english-vineyards

(I'll be updating this with photos over the weekend so come back later. Angela Lansbury.)