Mostly small and beautiful
So many tastings, so little time. So say probably most of our customers.
Not only is the calendar crammed with massive international fairs, conferences and symposiums, but back at home, there are more tasting dates (all shapes and sizes) than a dried fruit depository.
Most of these are the same-old, same-old. Wines opened and poured, fact sheets fact-checked, ten-second blurred transactions. The large-scale ones are completely impersonal, often dwarfed by their surroundings, commercial examples of “feel the width”. One company went full throttle by annexing The Royal Opera House to show off their wines. Good for them! Then there is the hipster-friendly grungy location, in a dive or a bar, or a gallery or using a blank space. Some tastings are blink-and-you-will-miss-them, pop up in restaurants between service, a more guerrilla-type approach.
This year, Les Caves de Pyrene held six events in London and one each in Leeds and Manchester, as well as wine dinners and grower takeovers.
Is there a useful point to generic tastings? Only customers can say. Do they attend for a specific reason (changing a list, educational purpose, the social catch-up). Does a tasting result in new listings and quantifiable sales? If the follow up is precise and immediate and the attendees in question kept notes and had a keen feeling about certain wines.
This year, Les Caves de Pyrene held six events in London and one each in Leeds and Manchester, as well as wine dinners and grower takeovers.
Or are most tastings a form of PR mood music, to remind our customers that we exist, showing that we can put on a good event, that our selection of wines is strong, that we have identifiable specialisms.
Of course, trade customers are becoming blasé about tastings. Something always seems to come up. An attendance of 50% and above is remarkable these days. In one sense, this is understandable, when one tasting morphs into another. Disappointing when you know how much time goes into organising an event.
The New Old Georgia
Organised in cahoots with Sager & Wine, our 2025 tasting season kicked off at Lyle’s (RIP) and marked the arrival of all new vintages and some new wines from Georgia, the aim being to demonstrate the diversity of wines from that country, from the more traditional and deeper skin-contact wines to the fresher, less extractive styles. With examples from twenty-one producers making wine in nine separate regions of the country, this was indeed a wine tour de Georgia, featuring some of the most reputed and innovative growers.
Savoie Faire x (Arguably) The First and Last Comparative Gringet Tasting
Our Savoie portfolio is small but perfectly formed with delicious wines made from unique, indigenous grapes. We saw an opportunity to pop open exciting regional examples ranging from glacial Chasselas to brooding Mondeuse. The double-header tasting also featured a separate homage to the late Dominique Belluard, who famously (if you are a wine nerd!) championed the native Gringet grape, a variety found locally in Ayze in the Haute-Savoie. To this end, we gathered fifteen iterations of Gringet, two from Dominique, the rest from his friends (mostly from the 2021 vintage). Gringet proved to be a noble variety, each producer imprinting their personality onto the wine in question.
Savoie wine of the tasting – everything was bang on, but the Les Vignes du Paradis wines were exceptional
Gringet of the tasting: Ganevat’s Le Feu (although Lapalu’s Feu Follet was beautiful, too).
More Splosh For Your Dosh
We had been noting the dip in average wine spend from both our on-trade and retail customers and felt that it would be a good idea to prove that one could buy wines at a relatively painless price without compromising quality.
Bang-for-buck as a tasting title being verboten, it was a toss-up between the uber-whimsical tagline above (the other being More Splash For Your Cash). Well, we like a bit of vulgar in our lives. Although most of the reps rolled their eyes and shuddered, the idea itself could not be sniffed at.
You don’t sell wine by the cliché.
In the end, the tasting featured 120 wines with a particular focus – the vast majority retailing under £20, made from organically or biodynamically farmed grapes, and in most cases, vinified in a low-intervention style. Affordable gems. And better than Poundland.
Kindred Spirits
I can call spirits from the vasty deep
Glendower ~ Henry IV, Part 1
The spirituous kindred folk in this case being Caroline Rozes (Domaine d’Aurensan); Laurent Cazottes (Maison Distillerie Cazottes); Barney Wilzak (Capreolus Distillery) and Jean-Luc Josse (Vinmouth) who came to Brawn in London to demonstrate the sheer quality and versatility of their spirits, how they can be an active infusive element in cocktails, and finally, during dinner, how they might perform when matched to certain dishes. We wanted sommeliers, bar managers and chefs to taste the purity and complexity of these elixirs and to think about ways to bring them into their wine, cocktail and food menus.
(Our First Ever) Champagne x Burgundy Tasting
Cinders, you shall go to the ball. Our Champagne selection has grown considerably over the last couple of years, and we are justifiably proud of the quality of these wines. Burgundy was the obvious dancing partner to bolster the tasting. Five producers came to London (the tasting and wine dinner were held in Wild By Tart in Belgravia) to pour and talk about their wines. We opened some special wines too, which points to one of the major benefits of a focused trade tasting, that a single sample may be tasted by up to 40 customers.
The Wines of Settentrione
The counterpart of our Southern Italian and the Islands tasting a couple of years ago called Mezzogiorno, this was our deep dive into the wines of the northern and central regions. Ok, I am taking a liberty with Lazio! Six producers attended and a line-up stacked with quality. From Barbera to Barolo, from Slarina to Sangiovese, from Valpolicellas of Veneto to the Vitovskas from Carso this was a Giro of the north, a wine tour de force.
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