Learn About Wines - With a Guide

If you wanted, say, to learn to drive a car, you'd probably want a few lessons. In fact, you have to have lessons these days... but the point remains.

You'd want someone to show you what to do and to impart their knowledge and expertise to you in order that you'd be able to get better at doing it.

Chris Gifford, owner of The Allotment, has long been involved in wine education, at both receiving and giving ends, and has an engaging and easy-going style that keeps the enjoyment foremost while never skirting the facts.

Chris has won numerous awards and has far too many qualifications for anything other than communicating and talking about wine to anyone who will listen (and even those who won't). He has taught and written wine courses since 2009 and is a keen advocate for the accessibility of wine to as wide an audience as possible.

Our courses run (virtually for the time being) at whichever level you feel comfortable. We supply the wines and you tune in (or come along, when that's possible once again) to taste them with our guidance and a complete set of notes and maps as relevant. This gets you as full a picture as we can provide, giving you context and and a comprehensive understanding of how and why the wine tastes as it does.

Some possible themes you might be interested in

  1. Wines of the world
  2. Great grapes - the great grapes of the world
  3. Lesser known grapes and wines and why you should try them
  4. Old v new world and the different styles
  5. Discovering France and her wine regions
  6. Burgundy's: white & red wines
  7. Italy: regional styles
  8. Food and wine matching

We run one-off wine course sessions and all the way up to 12 week courses, for individuals, small parties right up to groups of 80 or more.

You can choose whichever you'd like: you'll learn as much as you'd like, and possibly even more.