So you know your wines?By The Lee Old Church Trust
Offered a glass of Liebfraumilch today, most of us would probably decline politely. Yet 30-odd years ago it was one of the world’s biggest-selling generic wines. So if tastes (and the way our vino is fermented) can change that much in recent memory, how much have they changed in a couple of hundred or even a few thousand years?
Well, join us at The Lee Old Church on Friday 1st October and you’ll find out. Because Master of Wine and celebrated wine writer and consultant Maggie McNie will be entertaining us with a whistle-whetting tour of the History of Wine, starting 9,000 years ago in China.
Don’t be put off by the word ‘history’ either. This is going to be anything other than a dry account – in both senses of the word.
Firstly, because Maggie McNie is no ordinary wine expert. She originally trained as an actress at RADA and then as an opera singer, coached by the great English tenor Heddle Nash, before entering the wine business in 1973, working in sales and marketing and subsequently as a buyer for a number of major wine trade groups. Today she writes for a variety of wine magazines and contributes to such publications as the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Fine Wine and the Larousse Wine Encyclopaedia. She is the author of the Faber Book of Champagne and is currently working on a somewhat more academic book on the relationship between Wine and Religion.
Secondly, because you’re actually going to get the chance to put your wine ‘nose’ to the test with a sample of two very special wines, one of which will be the nearest thing one can get today to the original sparkling wine made around 1690, and the other made by a modern version of the method used to make the finest wines of antiquity.
So if you’d like to raise your glasses with Maggie tickets are just £15 each, available in advance from Pam Garner on 837501 or Jilly Carleton-Smith on 837205. They include a glass or two of our usual plonk at the end of the evening accompanied by canapés.