BYO for Wine Groups In Restaurants - how to organise BYO, transporting, tasting and recycling bottles

Problem
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

Bottle Basics - how to store those bottles you bought on holiday - and the cheese

Bottle Cork.

Problem
My parents stored bottles of Champagne upright in the house for years for special occasions. One or two of them had gone off. What a disappointment. Also an embarrassment, when we opened them specialilly for our visitors from France.

What went wrong? Now I know. But we recently visited friends living in the same street and they also had bottles in the house stored upright. What's wrong?

Now that we know, we assume everybody else knows. But they don't. So here's a reminder for you, and to check your family firends, nieghbours and colleagues, to be sure they are not storing bottles wrongly. Who should you learn from? We learned from the French and the professionals.

Horizontal?
Which bottles should be kept horizontal? Unopened bottles with corks. That way the cork is kept moist. If the cork shrinks, the air gets in and out. The bubbles escape. The aroma escapes. Hot air gets in and the wine spoils and goes vinegary.

Metal and Cork?
Many wine producers are turning to metal cap bottles. However, some prestige wines are still made with corks because it looks traditional and prestigious. If you buy old wines, or inherit them, or buy them for prestige or an investment, they will probably date back to the days when corks were widely used.

Answers
If you buy Champagne, you have probably seen bottles stored in warehouses, shops and cellars in a horizontal position. They are also stored for years in cool cellars. This is not just to hide them. It is to keep them cool.

Are other bottles not stored horizontally? Why? Are they kept in a chilled cabinet and just brought out for an event?

Champagne. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

A bottle stored in your warm kitchen near the stove is in a hot place. On top of a cupboard is a bad pllace because heat rises. In summer the heat is even worse. As for the tropics - !

Bad places to store good wines
Upright on the top of your kitchen cupboard.
Next to the hot oven and stove.
A well heated house.
On the table in the tropics.
Upright in the rack in a wheeled trollery.
A little cheap freestanding rack in a warm kitchen.

Good places to store include
A cool cellar.
An unheated outbuilding.
An unheated pantry with a grill to the cool outdoors.
An old fridge - temperature adjusted to suit the wine.
A wine compartment in a fridge.
A horizontal bottle rack in the kitchen only for items you will use soon.
A garage.

I don't like bottles kept in garages or sheds unless they are in a dedicated wine cabinet with a list of contents on the inside of the door or inside wall or a book stored in the cabinet. When you find an odd bottle or two in a garage or shed, you can never be sure somebody has not filled an old bottle with cleaning fluid or other undrinkable products.

Warning About Garage Storage
(In one case, people in the UK cleared out the garage of a deceased relative and gave a bottle, still with the label, to a raffle. The results were disastrous. I recall one permanent injury. One fatality. )
A couple in England were lucky to not suffer long-term effects:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318462/Couple-nearly-die-drinking-antifreeze-thought-vermouth.html

Anther accidents in Spain involved a wine bottle used for another product then placed in a fridge.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/man-dies-after-waiter-accidentally-serves-him-glass-of-detergent-instead-of-wine-10324018.html

Also check drinks which are not served from a bottle. In Indonesia I was served alcoholic drinks from a coconut. I was once in a group when everybody was served the same 'non-alcoholic' house special cocktail, at a time when alcohol was supposedly banned because of an election. I always ask to see the bottle.
http://www.abc.net.au/health/features/stories/2013/09/10/3845522.htm

A wine fridge can be expensive. The bigger and better ones have a lock. You can also store chocolates and medicines and photographic equipment. In the tropics you can use a wine fridge to store biscuits out of the way of rodents and insects without actually freezing the food. A white normal fridge suits a kitchen. A black wine fridge with a see-through door might be a decorative addition to a less used and cooler dining room or spare bedroom.

Blue cheddar. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Cheese
If you buy from a cheese shop, ask them how to store the cheese. A big cheese protected by a wax covering is protected from the atmosphere. As you cut it up and more of the cheese is exposed, it lasts less long. A cheese will have different shelf life if it is organic, soft, grated, wrapped in plastic, in a fridge, on a cheesboard under a glass cover which is sealed, or not a good fit. And so on.

Cheese Outdoors
We once had an au pair girl who kept her cheese on her bedroom windowsill in winter. The cheese bag handle or string was attached to the window handle so she coudl retrieve it from inside and so it could not fall off the ledge. (After that we were very careful about cleaning her outside windowsill regularly.)

Now we have cats and foxes and I don't like food stored outside unless it is protected. Restaruants have to aboide by regulations covering food, to prevent rats and other rodents, mice and so on, either eating the food or simply scampering across it and urinating into it.

I have given you a simplified version of what to check and why. I suggest you ask when buying wine. Most major supermarkets emply a master of wine as their buyer. You can ask to speak to staff or write to customer services. Also look for the manufacturer or importer and research the type of wine, wine bottle and closure.

Cheese
The same goes for cheese. Different cheeses, cut to different sizes, hard and soft cheese, protected by rind, or not, require different treatment. Some cheeses contain dried fruit, garlic, added salt. Labels may tell you. If not, ask.

Vineyard, Champagne And Wine Tours
You can take vineyard tour and go to wine tasting all over the world. When the guide asks 'any questions?', you can ask them how to store any wines you buy.

A good place to learn about wines is at the Denbies complex south of London in England. In summer you can buy tickets for either the outdoor tour, showing you differnet types of hillside, in sun or shade, from the hilltop. The other cellar tour shows you how the wine is made in barrels and stored - and you end up with a tasting. It's all in English, too, no struggling to understand a guide with a foreign accent.

Cheese tours are also fascinating. Again, ask about storage.

Travel websites
visitbritain.com
English wine. Scottish whisky.
visitwales.com (Welsh wineries and stays and tastings)

Wine tours and tasting UK
https://www.visitbritain.com/gb/en/food-and-drink/beer-cider-and-wine

Wine tours and tastings France
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g187070-Activities-c42-t205-France.html

Wine tours and tastings USA
https://uk.viator.com/USA-tours/Wine-Tasting-and-Winery-Tours/d77-g6-c21

Wine Tours, Tastings & Education
Several companies specialise in wine tours of Europe, South Africa, Australia, USA and worldwide.

You can also join wine tasting club in major cities and take a beginners' course with WSET (Wine and Spirits Education) in England and other countries. (I did level one. My husband did levels 2, 3 and 4 and has a diploma.

I go to several club dinners and tastings, and tastings, talks, dinners, at the Wine Society in Stevenage.  They hold events around Britain, London, and other cities, with talks by their own staff and/ or visiting winemakers from the UK and other countries.

Berry Brothers & Rudd, who have a big shop in London, England, also run more expensive wine tastings and dinners all year, good for a birthday or anniversary present or Valentine's Day gift.

Tips
To test whether your wines are still drinkable, buy or borrow a Coravin. This takes a tiny sample through what looks like a small Metal straw. Expensive to buy, but saves you money and embarrassment. See their website for pictures and demonstrations of how it works, as well as stockists.
www.coravin.co.uk

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
See my previous posts about wine tastings in the UK, England, Wales, Italy and worldwide. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Souvenir Corks, Labels, Bottles, Cases and Posters

I save empty wine bottles from restaurants on my travels.

Souvenir Corks
I have corks stuck onto a picture frame. You don't need a glass cover. You just let the corks project. 

That reminds me. I have a picture frame which has no glass. (Somebody else broke the glass.) I was wondering what to do with. I'll use it to frame corks.  I can create something new and personal and get rid of the clutter of a broken frame and lots of corks lying around. 

The other thing you can do with corks is put them in a carafe or see-through empty bottle, the larger the better, or a goldfish bowl or clear vase. I've seen a display like this at The Wine Society.


Other uses for corks are suspended from an Australian style cowboy hat to ward off flies. Or as a joke hat for a fancy dress party, or hanging from a lamp shade.

Dozens more projects from table tops, coasters, pinboards, jewellery holders, drawer pulls, plant put holders, bottle and four glasses stand - see them on Pinterest. Just google what can I do with old corks and you'll find lots more.

https://uk.pinterest.com/ladyandhershoe/1001-uses-for-wine-bottle-corks/

Use corks as replacement handles for old knives. 

http://yarnigras.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/ironcraft-28-and-recipe.html

If you don't have enough corks for a project, on eBay you can buy sets of 50 corks.

Labels
Souvenir labels can be floated off and stuck into a book, for example one with self-sticking transparent pages.

The supermarket size souvenir shops at wineries in California sell books designed for storing labels. If you are on a budget or having a lets clear clutter day, you can make a wine label book from any scrapbook. to make a suitable cover, you could photography one of the labels and print the copy for the front cover. Or use one of the labels for the front cover. Or print out a suitable label just using a fancy typeface and black ink and a word such as wines.

Alternatively label the cover with years and places where you travelled to drink the wines, whether it's within a mile of your home or all around the world.

Bottles
In the 1960s it was popular to save Mateus Rose Bottles to re-use as table lamps. You could buy a cheap kit to stick in the neck of the bottle. Just add a bulb and buy a cheap lamp from a budget store.

You could store bottles across the top of kitchen cupboards. 

If you have a Corvavin to preserve wines, empty bottles are handy for decanting leftover wine and re-bottling. You can use half bottles to save half bottle leftovers in a bottle with less air so it lasts longer. Re-cork it with one of those cork stoppers with a horizontal hat. 

Making Labels
Make a new label from your printer or simply stick on an address label with the name of the wine and the new date. Float the label off the old bottle and ra-apply it. Or get a photo of the wine from a wine catalogue from your nearest wine shop or a general supermarket such as Tesco or Marks or their weekly newspaper. Cut the picture of the bottle out of the magazine, with or without the text describing the wine.

These are on the cellar wall of The Sampler, in London.

Cases
Packing cases from prestigious or favourite houses. You can stick them on the wall unframed. Or frame them.

This one I saw at the Rose pub in Fulham, London.

People most likely to get wine boxes are pubs, bars and restaurants. Boxes can be used for decoration, for flower pots. You might be able to get somebody to give you one.

Collage
Wine labels could be used as a collage for a table top, for a home or business, for a wine bar or conservatory or cellar. Even to cover a suitcase or handbag.

Inspiring Sketching
A stored bottle is useful for inspiring a still life drawing or painting. You could even paint a mural in your kitchen or cellar, copying the bottles of the labels, the corks and the packing cases.



Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer,