Lifestyle and Parenting blog based in Surrey.

Wednesday 21 August 2013

West London Wine School

I really wish I knew a bit more about wines. I know what I enjoy but I don't really know what makes the wines have certain tastes and flavors. However, that was all set to change after school pal Vikki took me to the West London Wine School to check out their class on sparkling and sweet wines.

After a short walk from Imperial Wharf overground station, I was slightly apprehensive on arrival at our venue as the school is situated within a Big Yellow storage depot rather than the cellar of a vineyard, but we stuck with it and descended into the basement. On entering  we were warmly welcomed by our 'wine teacher' Cheryl in a modern room, set out with loads of nibbles and wine glasses.

As the class arrived, there was a real mix of people, but everyone seemed really friendly and chatty and up for a fun evening, so Cheryl started the class. I was expecting that we would just be tasting the wines and talking about the different flavour, but we were taught all about the different processes that go into making the different sparking wines, how actually Champagne and Cava are really similar and how they differ from Prosecco, in terms of regions and production. There were no spittoons in site (phew), and we were given generous amounts of the wines, so you could drink more of the ones you liked and leave the ones we were less keen on. Cheryl also recommended which  food would suit the wines we were tasting, but there were no rules, so we just nibbled away at what we fancied.


We then did the same for the sweet wines, finishing off with the sweetest wine possible, which we poured over ice cream for a boozy sweet sauce. We tried seven different wines, and the nibbles provided us with plenty of food that we didn't have dinner, however I recommend a stomach lining snack before you start - we opted for an en route banana... wise.

Although we attended a one off session (£35), most of the the others were on the last of an eight week course (£110), I'm totally going to do all the others as we had such a fab evening, chatting, sipping lovely wine and I really enjoyed learning about the beautiful wines. We were also given copies of all of the notes Cheryl had used in class to take home and we were encouraged to make notes about the wines as we tasted them in case our memories became a little hazy, which has been s useful to find my favorite wines to buy at home.

If Imperial Wharf isn't the most convenient location for you, there are branches all over the country, just search for you local school here, were you can enjoy educating your pallet!

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