Business
Emma Denney
Go to more tastings Alexandra Price, head of wine for wine bar and restaurant collection the Crispin Group, encourages her team to attend tastings to build their knowledge. When she first joined the industry 10 years ago, she confesses it took her a long time to settle into the tast- ing circuit, because she found it an incred- ibly daunting atmosphere, often caused by the lack of women at these events. But now, a decade on, there has been an explosion in tasting groups, with gatherings such as Hannah Crosbie’s Dalston Wine Club in London, which is aimed at younger drinkers and where people can learn in a much more relaxed and confident way. Price organises tastings of her own, and arranged one with the Bar Crispin team at Antidote in London’s Carnaby in January. She gives her sommeliers three questions to con- sider: “The first was work out which producers we have on the list; the second was to find an interesting fact about them; and thirdly, to pick your favourite wine and write a tasting note.” Agustina Basilico Miara, beverage manager
at Toklas in the Strand, London, also hosts her own training sessions for staff – Wine 101 – during quiet periods in the restaurant. It’s something she used to organise while at Hicce in London’s King’s Cross. “For me, it’s about trying to break barriers,”
she says. “Some people are uncomfortable and scared to say, ‘I think a wine tastes like that’. I’m using the base knowledge of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, but we’re also creating our own words and vocabulary, which may be a bit more unorthodox.” For example, if a team member tastes
mint in a wine, Miara will encourage them to express that and then guide them towards a more specific tasting note, such as eucalyptus. Sandia Chang, co-founder of the two-
Michelin-starred Kitchen Table in London’s Bloomsbury, says she is keen to provide
28 | The Caterer | 8 March 2024
Alexandra Price
“Some people can’t get it out of their heads – they are looking at the man going ‘Is he the
sommelier?’” Eloise Pontefract, Silo
tastings for working mothers in hospitality. Chang used to host wine industry “party gath- erings” twice a year at her hotdog and Cham- pagne bar Bubbledogs in London’s Fitzrovia, which she ran from 2012 until the pandemic. “There was no official invite, it was just a ‘tell
your friends’ kind of thing,” she says. “There would be a theme, such as sparkling wine, and everybody would bring a bottle of sparkling wine blind, and I would provide snacks,” she recalls. But since having two children in the last four years, she has been renegotiating the balance between motherhood, running a restaurant and going to tastings. “In hospitality, the hardest thing is the fact
there’s no night care, so my next new project is to have parents in the industry be able to go to these gatherings with their kids,” she says.
Agustina Basilico Miara
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