Corporate & Private Tastings

Hertfordshire Wine School also runs professionally organised wine events tailored to meet the demands of business and private clients

We run corporate events for companies, clubs and private groups. Our packages can be tailored to meet a wide variety of client requirements and to suit most budgets, including:

•  Client entertainment
•  Staff team reward or entertainment
•  Business seminars and conferences (usually prior to dinner)
•  Birthday parties, hen nights and other celebrations

The venue can be selected by us or held at your premises. The event can take many formats, from fun and informal with a quiz/team element, to a tutored tasting with a wide variety of wines.  All equipment, glasses, wine and tasting notes are supplied.

"Thank you so much for running the wine tasting last weekend which surpassed all our expectations. You did a wonderful job in sensing the atmosphere of the evening and managed to pitch the wine tasting at exactly the right level to maintain the balance between learning about wine tasting and keeping it fun." (40th Birthday Party, June 2012)

We also host fund-raising wine tastings for local and national charitable organisations. Our format for the evening can be tailor-made but usually includes: 

• Hire and cleaning of professional ISO tasting glasses

• Chilling equipment for optimal serving of white wines

• Around 6-8 different high-quality wines

• Professional tasting notes or quiz sheets on each wine

• Digital projection equipment with maps and slides

• A fun format tutored tasting

All our wine events are highly interactive and are produced and structured for all levels of knowledge and interest in wine. Our proven and successful format involves a fun, team-based wine quiz based on a blind-tasting game, with lots of carefully-picked clues which allow novices as much chance of winning as seasoned wine drinkers.  Each event includes a rapid introductory session on how to taste wine – explained in a no-nonsense practical approach.

• Jackson Family consolidates Oregon holdings
  Jackson Family Wines is aiming to increase its production of ‘world class’ Pinot Noir with the purchase of a number of vineyards in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
• London court hears brother and sister accused of £2m wine fraud
  A 38-year-old man, his sister and two others have been charged with two counts of conspiracy to defraud and one count of money laundering.
• Bordeaux winemakers give their take on Derenoncourt's 'special' en primeur samples
  International consultant Stephane Derenoncourt has caused a minor controversy by saying that he puts his wines through a 'special preparation' for En Primeur â€" but there is little unusual in that, Bordeaux vignerons and proprietors say.
• Mouton to open new gallery for label collection
  A new art gallery will open at Chateau Mouton Rothschild this summer to permanently house the travelling exhibition Mouton Rothschild: Paintings for the Labels.
• Decanter World Wine Awards 2013 winners announced
  Judges at this year's Decanter World Wine Awards tasted a record-breaking 14,362 wines and awarded nearly 10,000 medals, it was announced this morning.
• Cambridge and Copenhagan qualify for Left Bank Bordeaux Cup final
  Cambridge University and Copenhagan Business School have progressed to the final of this year's Left Bank Bordeaux Cup having won their places at the European semi-finals over the weekend.
• Natural wines transported by sail power
  More than 3,000 bottles of wine have been sailed into London by a new company keen to demonstrate the environmental benefits of old-fashioned wind power.
• Bordeaux 2012: Montrose, Clinet, Domaine de Chevalier release
  New price releases are being met by an increasingly small pool of buyers in the Bordeaux 2012 campaign.
• Michelangelo Pistoletto's Ornellaia works net £240k at London auction
  A collection of commemorative bottles of Ornellaia 2010 designed by Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto sold for £238,000 last night at an auction in London.
• Chinese investors snapping-up 'one chateau per month', say estate agents
  From the beginning of 2011, a leading Bordeaux real estate agent says, an average of one Bordeaux chateau per month has been sold to a Chinese investor.