Charlemagne Wine Club

The next tasting: Monday 19th July 2010 - Up in the air - Airline wines

Presented by Nick Forth

When you are sitting for several hours in a metal tube at 35,000 feet, thoughts turn inevitably to a nice glass of wine to ease you through the flight. But what sort of wine is on offer, how does the airline choose it, and how does the wine get from vineyard to aircraft? Is it worth paying the premium to sit in the front of the plane, in First, or are the wines in Business Class equally tempting? And which airline has the best wine offering?

Nick Forth has been a Charlemagne member for a number of years, and has worked for British Airways for even longer. In an attempt to help us to answer these questions, and more, Nick will share with us a range of wines from different airlines and cabins, while discussing what goes into their selection and the factors that influence our taste while we are up in the air.

Cheese will be served afterwards as usual, but no choice of chicken or beef.

Charlemagne Wine Club was founded in 1974 by a Mr Rogers who ran a wine business in Pitshanger Lane and had a particular interest in Burgundian wines. Charlemagne the Great was King of Burgundy - hence the Club's name.
Please read John Ducker's historical appreciation of our club.
Charlemagne members share a common interest in learning about and tasting fine wines. All levels of knowledge and experience are represented. It helps if you can tell the difference between chardonnay and cabernet franc - but if you don't, you will learn!
Our professionally tutored programme includes both the popular and 'classic' regions of the wine world. Our tastings present an opportunity to try wines which you might not normally imbibe (lesser known wines not to be found in the average supermarket, or because they are too pricey for ordinary drinking, and so on).
Meetings are normally held on the third Monday of the month (except August) and typically cost £19.

We ask that you bring your own set of ISO glasses to tastings.
For those of you who do not already have any ISO tasting glasses, we can provide new boxed sets of 6 Luigi Bormioli "Light & Music" 21.5cl ISO glasses for £12.50.
Stocks are now available again.
A set of 6 will offer the advantage of allowing you to keep wines to see how they develop in the glass while also allowing a separate water glass for those who wish. The box will also offer some protection to the glasses while being transported to and from tastings.
We will continue to have a few glasses for new members/guests and for unforeseen circumstances.

Bookings and Cancellations
We try to organise bookings for Charlemagne so that everyone has a fair chance to attend.
Dates of meetings are publicised up to a year in advance, in newsletters and on the website. We accept bookings only after the monthly newsletter has been sent out. Paper copies of the newsletter are mailed out two to three weeks ahead of the meeting, and email notification four days later (keeping things fair, to allow for "snailmail" delays). Spaces are allocated on a first come, first served basis. Email bookings will be confirmed by email, but we don't send out any tickets.
Once a meeting is fully booked, we run a waiting list. If you book but then will be unable to come, please do contact us. If you let us know by Thursday of the week before the meeting, you won't be charged. After that, unless we can reassign your booking to a wait-list member, you should expect to pay. Again, all email cancellations will be acknowledged.
You can attempt last minute bookings and cancellations by telephone to the number in the newsletter - please do not rely on e-mail for these unless you receive a confirmation email.
Remember, Charlemagne is a purely voluntary organisation, so we need to organise things simply for the committee's sake!