68 Wine Appreciation & Oenology courses

You will have heard of Port and Stilton as a common combination so now is your chance to find out why this works. Besides, do you know of a better way to spend a cold December evening?! ;-)

The evening is aimed at demonstrating which wines go well with different types of food. Our detailed food and wine matching workshop will help you understand which wines to pair with a wide variety of meat, poultry, fish vegetarian dishes as well as desserts and cheese, WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON CHRISTMAS since it is the time to be jolly! ;-)

Pairing cheese with wine should be easy and fun, yet so many people become stressed at the idea of make a wine faux-pas. Yet the best part about pairing food with wine is the experimentation and delights at finding a pairing that YOU enjoy. And that's exactly what this pairing workshop is all about ... putting the theory behind food & wine pairing rules into practice and discovering which cheese matches which wine and why!

Join us as we taste a selection of fantastic wines of Spain that are the buzz-words in the wine industry at the moment, served alongside mouth-watering platters of tapas and spanish-style amuse-bouches.

For many people we know, the first rule of wine is that it should be sparkling. If you fall into that bracket, or you know someone who does, allow us to introduce our Prestige Champagne and Sparkling Wine Masterclass.  There are two main ways in which this event stands out over our regular and very popular sparkling wine tastings. Firstly, we’ll be featuring eight wines rather than the usual six. Secondly, we’ll be focussing on more expensive bottles, with the line-up including a Prestige Cuvée from a well-known Champagne producer. What else can you expect? At least another couple of Champagnes as well as sparkling wines from other parts of Europe (England included) and a selection of the best of the New World. And with that amount of wine, we’ll have a couple of specially-selected cheeses on hand to mop up the bubbles and to show just how well fizz and cheese can go together. If you had to buy a bottle of each of these wines, it would cost over £300, which makes our price per ticket of just £55 look very appealing. We’re expecting this tasting to prove very popular, both for sparkling wine enthusiasts and also for those looking to buy a present for the fizz fans in their life. So if you’d like to book a place, we’d advise you to move quickly before they’ve all gone.

Only 12 places available, so please do hurry booking as this exclusive tasting will sell out quickly. There will be no more opportunities to taste these extremely rare wines. These Champagnes were released in very small quantities in the first place and then aged in my own wine cellar to perfection, so none of them are still available on the market to purchase.

There is a 20-minute Introduction to Wine Tasting at the start of this tasting.

Join us in Southampton at the fabulous DOLPHIN HOTEL, as we taste several pairs of wines made from the same grape variety, but from different countries.  Do you think you can tell the difference between Zinfandel from California and Primitivo from Puglia? – by the end of the night you will be able to!

We tour the stunning vineyards of the Loire Valley for refreshing, mineral and bone-dry wines. We'll go East to taste a steely Sauvignon Blanc, through the Touraine Region to experience a Sancerre and thus enjoy the sharp delights of a mouth-watering Sauvignon Blanc. Discover why the Loire Valley wines are some of the most expensive wines today, and how to find the best value for money wines from this region.

Learn why France still makes some of the best wines in the world. Discover the best value from Bordeaux, and taste some wines from the left bank. Compare these Cabernet Sauvignon-dominated wines to the right bank and the top appellations of Saint Emilion and Pomerol, where Merlot makes up the majority of the blend.