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Group: Two groups as below:
Wine Appreciation Group 1 (WAG 1) meet on the first Friday of each month at 2.30pm
Wine Appreciation Group 2 (WAG 2) meet on the first Tuesday of each month at 2.00pm
Venue: No Fixed Venue
Details:
The Wine Appreciation Group (WAG) is for people who have an interest in and enjoy wine; appreciate it more by learning the various methods of producing different wines from vineyards in this country and abroad and of course, tasting and comparing. A small charge is made to cover the cost of the wine etc.
Group Leaders: Group 1 Jill Goldsworthy
Contact: Email the group leader at wineappreciation1@tonbridgeu3a.uk.
Group 2 Julie Watkins
Contact: Email the group leader at wineappreciation2@tonbridgeu3a.uk
Can You, Or Should You, Choose a Wine By its Label?
Wine Appreciation Group 1 - Jill Goldsworthy
How does a wine drinking group fit into the u3a ethos of learning, you might ask? Remembering that the organisation’s slogan is Learn, Laugh, Live, I think the group comfortably fits in with all three.
The 15 members of the group share a love of wine as well as an enthusiasm to discover and share different varieties. We meet once a month in each other’s houses and one member will choose a theme and bring bottles for us all to taste, usually two white and two red.
Themes might be a particular country, a type of grape or from a particular supplier. Sometimes we go ‘off piste’ for something completely different, for example: Old World compared with New World; pairing wine with chocolate; choosing a wine by its label – good or bad idea?; Lidl v Majestic; wine writers’ recommendations.
A recent meeting with a talk about wines from Eastern Europe introduced us to a very fine one from the Lebanon.
We also had a blind tasting of sparkling wines and, no, Champagne did not come out on top!
Our afternoons are very convivial and enjoyable and are definitely a learning experience. We soak up the wine with bread and cheese and I must emphasise that it is purely a tasting with no more than one glass of wine consumed in total. (That is, unless you’re lucky enough to be able to walk to the venue, in which case you might have a little more!) We all contribute to the cost of the wine and food and twice a year we get together for a lunch.
Is there wine? Of course!
Serious Selection or Just a Boozy Afternoon?
Wine Appreciation Group 2 - Julie Watkins
I expect some people think that being part of a Wine Appreciation Group is just a great excuse for a “boozy afternoon”. While we certainly enjoy ourselves, we do take our sampling seriously!
Our Group WAG 2 is a group of 12 members who meet monthly in one another’s homes. Thanks to our numbers, each of us hosts and provides the wines just once a year, meaning no money ever needs to change hands. We occasionally swap months when holidays disrupt our annual timetable, and we intentionally do not record our December Christmas Feast Meeting. Hosted by our member David, December is a purely social occasion where we enjoy his reliably delicious selection of wines. We set scoring aside for that month, after all, simply appreciating the wine is our only duty.
The Mistress of the spreadsheet
For the rest of the year, things become a little more considered. Wendy, our official “Mistress of the Spreadsheet,” keeps a meticulous record of everything we sample and our impressions of each. It is an invaluable resource when we are out choosing wines independently and a great help to those of us who are less confident navigating a spreadsheet.
Recent meetings have sparked some surprisingly lively debate and revealed a few runaway favourites, with two wines even achieving the almost mythical 10 out of 10 score from the group. So, if you happen to spot any of us staring intently at the supermarket wine shelves on a Friday afternoon, now you know why, we are probably consulting Wendy’s master spreadsheet!
It’ s not just a boozy afternoon..., although we do take our duties seriously.
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