Great Sherry Festival 2015

The Great Sherry Festival 2015 will take place between Monday 14^th and Sunday 27^th September and will include wine merchant in-store tastings, winemaker dinners and price promotions among other events. So check with your local wine merchant or restaurant to see what they are planning, and encourage them to get involved.

The event will kick off with the V Great Sherry Tasting on the 14^th September, which is the biggest tasting ever held in the UK. It will include masterclasses, three of which have been confirmed so far. Beltrán Domecq will host one on En Rama Sherries and another on biological ageing v traditional ageing, while there will be another on Sherry, Chocolate and Cheese with Sarah Evans MW. For further information check with www.sherryinstitute.co.uk

The Great Sherry Festival

It is great to see some active promotion of Sherry taking place, and of course the Great Sherry Tasting on the 21st. Heaven knows, it is much needed. What gets me though, is that as usual in Britain, everything is centred on London. Any remotely interesting tasting - and there are plenty of them - takes place in London.

Perhaps promoters don't understand how long it takes to get there, or how much it costs, so here's my experience of the Great Sherry Tasting last year, going from Edinburgh:

Rise at 4.00 am and catch a plane to Gatwick at 6.00 am. Catch Gatwick Express in to Victoria, and change underground trains twice to get to Tottenham Court Road for about 9.30 am. Attend the tasting for two or three hours, have some lunch, and then head back to the underground, hopefully before the horrific rush-hour crush, then change trains to Victoria, Gatwick Express etc. I got home at about 8.30 pm. And I had spent well over £120.00. It is a horrific journey, and only a Sherry nut like me would have contemplated making the effort.

Perhaps promoters might give the rest of the country some consideration, and  hold tastings somewhere else occasionally, or even more than one. Sherry is so in need of promotion, that more than one would be of huge benefit. Yes, people anywhere in the UK can participate, but not many though - there are only 50 POS kits available! I fully understand the budget restrictions, but most of the hard work and costs will be wasted if Sherry is only promoted in London. We are not heathens  north of the M25 - and we vastly outnumber Londoners.

1.10.13 Great Sherry Festival

The Great Sherry Festival will take place from the 14^th – 27^th October, organised by the Sherry Institute of Spain. This is the inaugural consumer campaign for the UK on and off trades which will take place in participating restaurants, bars and wine merchants. It will be centred on London, and the many Sherry bars there will issue Sherry Loyalty Cards which will receive a stamp for every glass of Sherry purchased. When the card is full, consumers will be able to redeem the card for a special Sherry gift via the Great Sherry Festival facebook page, and gain entry into a prize draw.

Wine and Sherry bars involved are: Fino, Camino, Pepito, Barrica, Copita, Capote y Toro and Drakes. The wine merchants involved are Fortnum and Mason, Selfridges, Majestic Wine, Theatre of Wine, Prohibition Wines, Last Drop Wines among others. There will be a big consumer campaign as well as Facebook and Twitter activity. So if you live in London, have a great time.