LIVE: Lunch with a Buyer: Wine Champs, Tuesday 16th June, 1-2pm

Membership Introductions
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While our Buyers are currently stuck at home, unable to traverse the world looking for great new wines for us, we’ve been enjoying the opportunity to get to know them a bit better!

Thank you to everyone who attended our Buyer’s Lunch with Pierre Mansour - if you missed it and would like to catch up, please have a read of the thread here: Lunch with a Buyer: Pierre Mansour, Tuesday 26th May, 1-2pm - #2

For our last very special Buyer’s Lunch, we will be honouring our annual Wine Champions offer!

We will be joined by a selection of our Buyers and you will be free to ask them any questions you might have about our Wine Champs offer (or anything else)! We’re pleased to announce that we will be joined by Jo Locke MW, Freddy Bulmer, Toby Morrhall, Sarah Knowles MW and Matthew Horsley.

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Lunch with a Buyer: Wine Champs, Tuesday 16th June, 1-2pm

On Tuesday lunchtime, a selection of our Buyers will be joining us for a Q&A - perhaps you’d like to ask them about the process of Wine Champs and their role within it, or maybe you’d like to know how each Buyer decides their Wine Champions during the blind tasting? Join us for an hour - maybe even bring a glass of something along - for a fun discussion about all things wine!

How to take part

Please send us your questions in advance, by replying to this topic - or just log in to the Community before 1pm on Tuesday and there’ll be a ‘ LIVE FROM 1PM: Lunch with a Buyer ’ topic where the event will take place. The chat will be in written format - like a regular topic here.

We hope you can make it along! Who’s planning on joining us for lunch?

  • I’ll be there!
  • I can’t make it, but I’ll send over a question in advance.

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We’re pleased to announce that we’ll be joined by our Buyers Jo Locke MW, Freddy Bulmer, Toby Morrhall, Sarah Knowles MW and Matthew Horsley!

Please comment below with your questions for the Buyers attending!

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44j4cm

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You created your own version of the meme! :joy: :clap:

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There’s a distinct lack of ships for a start… :wink:

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An admiral pun.

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Damn, in my haste to be funny I missed that :joy:

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I know there is a question on Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, just not sure what it is yet…

How blind is the blind tasting? Do you go by variety / geography or completely random in from uniform containers?

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What was your single (or two-three) most memorable blind tasting experience(s) (a genuine surprise, a genuine disappointment, a pre-conception shattering glass of wine)?

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If you taste a wine you are already familiar with, is it difficult to separate any preconceptions from assessing its worthiness as a wine champion?

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Just bumping this to make sure you all have time to ask your questions! :smiley:

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Out of all the Wine Champions this year, which bottle is your personal favourite?

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And which wine shocked, SHOCKED you by not making the line- up?

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LAST CHANCE to give your advance questions to the buyers - the rest we can ask live on the day!

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A question on tasting in general: How much consideration is given to the artificial context of a tasting vs how people actually enjoy wine?

Some wines come off really well in tastings, but are less enjoyable when you drink them while others don’t come across as well in tastings but are a joy to drink.

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A couple more have occurred to me after seeing the selection:

Will there be a different selection of wine champions at a higher price bracket, or do they all have to be under £15 (excepting sparkling wine)?

There is only one sweet wine and one fortified wine in the line-up, would be interested in your opinions whether there is a specific reason for that.

Sorry, but got to ask. In the video on Instagram, there seemed to be some discussion regarding individual producers / brands. It was my understanding that the whole event was carried out blind, is this the case?

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A couple more questions:

We know that a wine is a champion if it achieves 70% of the marks available. Would the Society ever consider publishing the actual points that the Wine Champions scored. Perhaps such a list would be better suited to being published on the Community but it would be an interesting discussion point to see which of the Champions achieved the full 100% and which were closer to the 70%.

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Please name and shame the buyers who did not award full marks to forum favourite Xinomavro Jeunes Vignes, Thymiopoulos 2018.

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I guess my question is similar to others on price/quality/value.

Are the wines tasted in price points or just categories? And what are they, it would be useful to know if an aromatic white was completing in a country/region flight or against other similar style, for instance.

Another question this time on quantity. Do the wine have to be available in a certain amount to be included? Guess the answer is yes, but how much extra does the society sell of a wine by listing it in the winner?

Sorry all very business like questions.

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