Wine Master's Report

 Wine Master Report 2020.

It came as a great pleasure to be the Wine Master for the society for 2020.

I must admit to accepting the position with a great deal of trepidation given the Oenophiles, Aficionados and Connoisseurs among our number.

Unfortunately, the year started with a whimper and not a bang with the club deciding to run a Zoom Meeting due to COVID. Having had zero experience in the job, my timing on the uncorking, decanting, washing and rebottling of the wine was, let’s say, a couple of hours out!! However thankfully help was soon at hand.

As I settled into the role, I found it to be a most enjoyable experience, and I am now starting to well appreciate the work of past Cellar Masters in preparing the wonderful selection of wines available to us.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank our Cellar Master, Shaun English for taking the time to input all our wines into the new Cellar Tracker program. It has certainly made the job of selecting wines much easier given the functionality of the application in sorting and searching on the wines that we hold.

I have particularly enjoyed researching and selecting wines from Europe, it has been a very rewarding experience learning about some of these famous wine regions, and the opportunity to serve some of these great wines to you.

I’m pleased that as a club that we were able to pull together a few dinners through the year, and would take the opportunity to thank our food Master Andrew Lewis in being able to organise them under such trying circumstances.

It has been very satisfying to research and decide upon the Wine and Cuisine pairings, and then to listen to the comments from around the table on how well (or not) those selections matched the great food that was prepared for us.

This role has greatly increased my knowledge of wine, and I am grateful for the support of past Wine Master, and current President Anthony Singleton, past Cellar Master John Coco and new member Glenn Sharp for their assistance through the year.

Finally, with thanks from our very able President Anthony Singleton, and the rest of the committee, I look forward to the coming year and enjoyable times ahead.

Kind Regards Andrew Rowan

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.” Benjamin Franklin