We all know what alcohol can do to your brain, but in this case I’m afraid I cannot blame the wine. I forgot to bring my camera! Luckily the people at Waitrose were better prepared than I was, so as an exception to the rule I’m sharing not my own, but photos made by the talented photographer Emma Gutteridge.
But let me start at the beginning. Last month, on a day that London saw the first glimpse of summer, I was invited to a Waitrose Wine Tasting event to celebrate the launch of Waitrose Cellar. And the best part: the wine tasting took place during a boat ride on the beautiful Regent Canal.
Waitrose is probably my favorite supermarket here in London as it’s most similar to the Albert Heijn in the Netherlands (I do miss shopping at AH). I must admit though that I don’t buy wine as often as I used to. Not that I’m drinking any less…But most of the socializing here in London happens in restaurants and pubs, so there aren’t as many occasions where you want to open a bottle of wine at home.
But when I do, I’d like to know I’m buying a good one. For a reasonable price of course. And since I’m not an expert, I can use all the professional help I can get. And that’s where Waitrose Cellar comes in. Their expert buyers have selected 1200 interesting and exclusive wines that you can browse by wine type, country, region and grape and then buy online. But they’ll also give you recommendations based on wines you’ve enjoyed before. And one feature I always find very useful is the pairing with food.
We got to meet two of their wine experts at the event who had selected some very delicious wines for us. And as you can see above, bloggers don’t only like to taste wine, we also like to Instagram and tweet about it.
A few glasses of wine and a boat ride later, we were paired into two groups – group red and group white – to see how well we could match the wine with the blogger. In true speed-dating style we were given 3 minutes to learn as much as possible about each other’s character and food and wine preferences. This is me, pulling my most professional “I’m gonna get to the bottom of this” face.
And then it was time to put the Waitrose Cellar website to good use. Based on what we had found out about the others, we had to pick a bottle of wine including a motivation why we had chosen that particular wine. A few days later I received a box with 6 different bottles that are apparently very ‘me’. I guess it’s time to throw my own wine tasting party now.
