What you can see and do at the Wine Society in Stevenage

 

The Wine Cellar at The Wine Society. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

The wine society is about wîne but there is lots to entertain and impress those who are not wine drinkers or don’t know much about wine.

So it is a good place to stop for a break on your way out of London going north or back on your way from Cambridge. 

1 I am always entranced by the spiral staircase under circular glass leading down to the wine cellar.

2 Another novelty is what you can do with cork or imitation cork. Make a stool.

Corks at The Wine Society. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

3 You can take them your old corks for recycling. The donated corks are sent to Portugal.

What's free or cheap?

At the door on Wed 29th October 2025 we were offered a tasting of two Greek wines. 

The Enomatic Machine

Except on special occasions, the enomatic machine is free offering you a teeny taste of several wine which they are promoting. 

Enomatic, which I have previously thought of as a generic name is actually a brand name, so it must have a capital letter for a proper name, and not be used for any device other than their own branded product. Eno is related to the name for wine, and matic as in automatic, a wine dispenser, operated by a card. In shops and restaurants or restaurant-bars such as machine is operated by a card which you buy. Like a train card, you can add amounts of money to the card, and keep using it until the money runs out, then top it up. 

The Wine Society has a well organized double room or shelving. You can look for a country. Or a style of wine such as Spritis or Sweet Wine, Red, white. Also beer. Low and no alcohol.

If you are not a drinker, or are driving and want to taste and spit, or sober up, or entertain a non drinking passenger, there are coffee dispensers which have drinking chocolate as well as fresh milk in a minifridge. Also water. And toilets. 

What to buy for yourself or non drinking friends to eat, or just general gifts? And chocolates. Seasonal items, for Christmas, when we were there. Boar pate. Duck pate. Olives. Crisps and nuts. The selection changes all the time.

They also have ends of stocks at reduced prices. And mixed cases of six bottles with damaged labels for about a hundred pounds or more. The tops of the boxes were open so we were able to look in and see what was there. You might not want to serve a bottle with a damaged label for a festive occasion, or in a restaurant to a VIP customer. But for yourself, or a friend who likes a bargain, that is an option. 

Useful Websites

https://www.thewinesociety.com/

How Your Views Of Hotels Can Change - My Hotel Review of Rila Hotel in Borovets, Bulgaria

I am glad I did not write a review of our hotel on the first night because by day two my impressions of the hotel had completely changed.

Borovets is a ski resort south of Sofia, Bulgaria's capital. From the city you can see the mountains, the Balkans, the Rila mountains. Borovets means pine (tree forest) in Bulgarian. The hotel is the Rila hotel.

Both the Rila hotel, named after the mountain it backs onto, and its neighbour, the Samokovo hotel, named after the nearby town, were built in the same era, the 1980s, according to the friendly and helpful man, Antonio, in the Rila hotel spa.

My first impression of the hotel was not brilliant. The lifts were out of sight of the reception. At the end of the corridor.

Lifts?
To get from reception to the restaurant you climb a spiral staircase. This is a ski resport. Heaven help you if you brought granny to babysit (there is a childrens playroom so they expect kids. Or a skier could have a sports injury and want to go upstairs without hobbling back and forward from the lifts to reception and the restaurant. When we checking out, I discovered they have lifts in the hall but these were being renovated. If I had seen a sign explaining that the lifts were being refurbished, I would have understood and been understanding.

Views?
 I did not like the room beside the noisy service room nor the small bacony and view over the car park, so I popped across to the room opposite and phoned down to ask reception if I could switch rooms. They said the charged another 10 leva (Bulgarian coins) a day for the better view.

We gladly paid to switch to the better view. The big balcony had two chairs - one of which we used so that both of us could sit at the desk typing on the internet.

After switching rooms, we were a lot happier. The room was too hot, and unaccountably the air con did not work because we were told the whole hotel oeprates the air con which is turned off if they deem fit. However, the balcony room door when opened cooled down the room.

Once settled in to a better room with a good view, I was in a better mood to appreciate the colourful red carpet and the knee high shower attachment beside the toilet which turns the toilet into a bidet, the same style as in Singapore and Malaysia.

Downstairs, we met up with our group. Another member of the group had also changed rooms to get away from a room next to the noisy service room.

No - Not Nuggets!
Supper the first evening was a buffet which included only rice, no potatoes, except dried up fries. The meat was dried up beef and dry chicken nuggets.

However, on night two the buffet included super saute potatoes and moist chicken in gravy.

Wine Society - Spiral Staircase Wine Cellar to see

If you join the Wine Society, which costs £40 a year, you get invited to wine tastings, some free, some for a fee. You get their newsletter. You can try wines in their Enomatic machines (often half a dozen free, the rest at assorted prices). You are invited to events which include talks and tastings and sometimes snacks or meals (various fees). And if you are a member and visit you can see the newly installed wine cellar, which you could buy to store a wine collection under a home, hotel or business, for a few thousand pounds. 

This is what it looks like with one of the glass display covers lifted so that you can descend to see the wines. 

I asked, 'What if you got stuck inside?' A button inside at the top releases the cover which lifts automatically. The wines are temperature controlled. And there's a free flow of air so you can breathe with the doors shut. 

I suppose you could hide down there. Or cover you lid with a rug to hide the wines.

If you don't want to buy one, it's an amusing feature to see.

To visit the wine society, you must join or be taken by a member. But it's really only £20 because your membership fee of £40 gives you £20 off your first purchase of wine.

The Wine Society, Gunnels Wood Road, Stevenage, Herts SG1 2BT.

Tel: 01438 741177.

https://www.thewinesociety.com

Opening times are 10-6 Mon-Wed and Friday, Thurs an hour later, 10-7, Sat 9.30-5.30 (closed on Sunday).

The Wine Society is in Stevenage. Whilst in the area, you could visit Stevenage Museum, which is free, or Hatfield House or Knebworth House. For a description of the Stevenage Museum, beside the spiral staircase church tower, see the previous post.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author, speaker.