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Thursday, December 21, 2006






THE SAMPLER: DISPENSING A LITTLE LOVE ON UPPER ST

I don't often write about things other than meals, but, on occasions I come across people and places in this crazy old business we call blogdom who really deserve all the credit and publicity they can get.

Such a place is The Sampler a new wine merchant on Upper St. This however, is no ordinary wine merchant. It is equipped with dispensing machines from a company called Enomatic in Italy. They have only made 150 of them to date and the Sampler has 10 of them.

Each machine can be loaded with a selection of bottles and wine is dispensed in three different measures with prices, obviously, dependent upon the wines chosen

There is a small area for glasses and a sink to rinse between tastings while the machine is triggered by the insertion of a pre-paid card which can be topped up as needed and lasts for twelve months.

A truly splendid idea and one that is made even better by the interesting, unusual and varied selection of wines which are displayed by grape variety so one can compare new and old world interpretations.

Also splendid are Jamie and Dawn whose nascent enterprise this is. Their passion comes through and they are pretty good salespeople too as today's lunchtime excursion proved.

I had bought a colleague a £10 card to help sate his passion for Barolo and we headed up for a little lunchtime bevvy and exited a happy hour later having tasted seven wines ( in small measures so it added up to just over a glass in total ) and bought about £100 of wines between us. Some of them at the enthusiastic insistence of Dawn who was minding shop.

I can very easily see myself giving cards for The Sampler as gifts and, even more easily, I can see myself pottering up there on an evening or weekend to snort a few interesting Rioja's

A very well worthwhile enterprise

Check it out on www.thesampler.co.uk
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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dos Hermanos beats me to it again! I was just reading the US mag Food & Wine...see # 56 here http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/100-tastes-to-try-in-07 and I thought, now that sounds fun. And then not one day later, I stumbled across this one http://www.thewineroomonline.com/ while in the Orlando area. And I've got a date with my dad here http://www.seventhstreetwine.com/ early next week.

So then I started Googling the same in London and found this one
http://www.enomatic.co.nz/installations/retail_wine_stores/negozio_classica/
but missed The Sampler. Thanks for the heads up!

Keep up the good work,

Krista

Friday, December 22, 2006 1:50:00 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've just returned from Cape Town and found a place doing this there, in the "fishing village" suburb of Kalk Bay.

It sounded a bit complicated first, what with having to get a card before we could get any wine, so we just sat down and asked the nice waitress to bring us a glass each without us having to fiddle with the machine. Which she did, and when she brought the wine she left us with a pre-loaded card.

We did put the card to further use after that and sample our way through a fair number of the whites and one or two of the reds.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007 4:54:00 pm  

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