Wined, dined and rested.

I had a new experience last week – my cool young London family took me to one of the Vagabond Wines winebars for the first time.
The concept is to introduce people – cool young people, judging by the language used on their website – to wine from all over the world by allowing them to choose what to taste according to basic flavour descriptions. For example, one section is called “vibrant”, another “aromatic” and so on, and within each section you might find wines from France, Argentina, Australia, Portugal etc.

As you go in you take a card for which you buy credit…..

…… then you can go round all the various sections deciding what you would like to taste; I think the idea is that this may be less threatening than turning up at a more traditional winebar and feeling you don’t know what to order. Actually, I do really like this idea – although I now know roughly what kind of wine I like, and what to expect of different grapes and terroirs, this idea of wandering around (hence vagabond – from the Latin word meaning “wandering”) and trying wine based only on taste seems to me an excellent way for people to start their wine adventuring.
So that’s the concept and it is all made all the more fun by the décor – wooden wine boxes used for everything from tables to lampshades, and huge maps of wine regions painted on the walls……

and by the fact that the place is full of floor-to-ceiling shelves with a glass cabinet at chest level with bottles lined up, each with a tube inside it and a tap above it.

There is a slot at the end of each section for you to insert the pre-paid card that you topped up on your way in, then there are 3 buttons above each wine, for you to choose a “taste”, a glass or a bottle of any of the wines – you hold your glass under the tap and press the appropriate button. Hopefully you will be more organised that I was as, in my enthusiasm, I kept having to rush back to where I had just gathered a taste of something because I’d left my card in the slot……( To all those who may have enjoyed free wine on my card, I wish you well. Raise a glass to me next time you go.)
Yes, you may have deduced correctly that I took to this experience with gusto – I was sent off at one point with 2 glasses to find some tastes to bring back for the rest of my party, and 20 minutes later returned slightly less sedately than I had left, holding 4 glasses and telling everyone what amazing wines I had just tasted but I couldn’t quite remember what they were.

To be fair, I had had to ask one of the knowledgeable “wine advisors” employed by Vagabond to change a bottle that had run out (BEFORE I got to it, contrary to my daughter’s assumption that I had finished it myself) and I got chatting to her about wine; I may have sounded as if I knew more than I really do since I started a conversation about grape types, and she responded enthusiastically by advising me on other wines I should be trying. I suppose this is a face to face version of the internet “customers who bought this also bought this”, but it is far less irritating in person and actually I found it fascinating because the wine advisor in question really knew her stuff. But it did mean that I ended up with 4 wine glasses, to the general hilarity of my family when I eventually returned to the table.

Anyway, the whole experience was most  enjoyable – it is exciting to be able to try things differently and I have no doubt that I will be Vagabonding again pretty soon.  Perhaps I will be able to shock them all by returning with six glasses next time….