Meet our Vinothèque programme

Meet our exclusive Vinothèque programme

If you work in the on-trade – or indeed know people who do, it’s high time we talked a little bit about our Vinothèque programme.

An initiative of cellaring small parcels of wines in perfect conditions for a few extra years, allowing them to mature and develop before release.

(And saving space in your cellars – which we know is always at a premium – to boot.)

The wines are specially selected on a quarterly-ish basis by Stefan Neumann MS, our in-house Master Sommelier, and our Head of Fine Wine, Richard Girling.

They often include several wines that wouldn’t normally be released with extra maturity – but benefit from it immensely.

And if you would like to be kept up to date whenever a fresh selection is announced, you can subscribe to the mailing list right here.

(To whet your appetite, here’s an advance look at what’s coming up in July…)

The joy of well-aged wines

Wine’s capacity to age is one of its greatest pleasures.

Simply to think about the long years that a wine has spent on its journey from freshly-harvested grapes to the liquids in your glass is a treat afforded by few other drinks.

But of course the theory doesn’t compare to the sheer joy of tasting something that has been given time to evolve; to shift and soften and gain complexity, to develop layers of flavour that could not otherwise have been there.

Now not all wines are suitable for ageing. Some are best drunk in the thrilling vividness of youth.

But it’s our belief – attained through decades of collective experience – that there are far more wines which deserve and benefit from a little ageing than is generally understood.

A question of space

The biggest difficulty in ageing wine is in having the space to store stock for years. A headache for wineries of any size.

If a facility is at capacity then bottles have to be sold – wherever the wine is at in its evolution.

Private customers, of course, can put bottles or cases of their favourite wines aside for a few years (when they can bear to wait). But we know that for restaurants with significant and evolving wine lists, holding on to maturing stock becomes a greater challenge.

Which is why we developed Vinothèque.

A way of allowing our on-trade customers to offer wines at their very best – without sacrificing significant cellar space.

Whilst most of the wines we release through Vinothèque have the capacity to age even further, all are judged by Stefan and Richard to be in a beautiful stage of development already.

In short, the joy of mature wine … without the trouble of maturation.

Subscribe to our Vinothèque mailing list to be first to know about releases … and learn more about the programme in this article with The Buyer.