Long she reigned over us…

Long she reigned over us…

Before we get into the pros and cons of constitutional monarchy, can we just deal with a few practicalities?

Can we just add our small voice to those remembering The Queen? Whether you’re a staunch royalist or rabid republican, I think we can all agree that she lived a remarkable life of dedicated public service and things are not going to be the same without her.
We will be open everyday, except Monday, the day of The Queen’s Funeral.
However, with the funeral on Monday, it seems somewhat tone deaf to continue with our Open Season drop-in wine tasting. Yes, recently precedents have been set for partying on the eve of royal funerals, it’s just that this is not a club which we wish to join. Instead, we’ll put it back a week until Saturday 24 September.

We will still be hosting our first guided wine tasting of the Autumn on the following Wednesday, so this is now how our immediate events diary stands:

2 Tasting Events for your Diary

Open Season, Autumn 2022

NEW DATE: Saturday 17 September, 2-6pm

FREE!

Every season, we hold a free, drop-in, wine tasting just to introduce our established customers to some new wines and to introduce new customers to the whole kit and caboodle. We invite one or two of our suppliers to join us to show us their wares and we get some other – seasonally appropriate – stuff open too. Generally there are over 20 bottles open. All you have to do is turn up ready to sniff, slurp and swallow. (Spitting is an option that is taken remarkably infrequently.)

And if free wine-tasting isn’t enough, all the of the wines open that afternoon will be subject to a 10% discount too. OMG this is a gift horse if ever there was one. You know where not to look!

So get your tasting-trousers on and drop in a week on Saturday.

Best of Rise & Vine

Wednesday 21 September 2022, 7pm

TICKETS £30 BOOK HERE

First of our guided wine tastings for the season is Best of Rise & Vine. Partly this is a chance for you to taste the delights of the Rise & Vine snacking menu, including Bath cheese and Lincolnshire charcuterie; and partly it’s a chance for us to share with you some of our favourite ‘unsung heroes’ from our wine list. You’ve tried Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs, but have you tried Roussanne or Chasan? Cabernet and Pinot Noir are obvious, but Zweigelt or Marselan?

So we’re putting on a spread of tasty treats to accompany some wines that we’re pretty sure you may not have tried and we’re even more sure that you’re going to luuuurrrrve!

We’ll prepare extensive tasting notes for you to take away and will guide you through each wine sniff-by-sniff and slurp-by-slurp. We start at 7pm and the evening runs until about 9pm. Purchases of the wines showcased on the night will be subject to a 10% discount too!

As for the pros and cons of constitutional monarchy…? For sure, there are very big questions to ask about one family owning quite so many tracts of the land. But I’ve said this before… there’s something to be said for having an essentially powerless national leader whose job is to stay politically neutral. We should contemplate the possibility that somewhere in another dimension there may be a parallel world where the Republic of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is led by President Boris Johnson (for his full term – as we’ve seen, it’s very hard to remove a president halfway through his term), possibly having taken over from President Corbyn? ‘Nuff said?

Chin up chaps. Maximum respect and carry on….