The International Exhibition Co-operative Wine Society is the worlds oldest wine club and one of the more interesting organisations from which to buy wine. In 1874, the then Government asked Major-General Henry Scott, one of the great family of architects and who helped design the Royal Albert Hall, to deal with a surplus of casks of wine left in the cellars of the Hall after the last of the great Victorian industrial exhibitions. Aided by two other grandees, a distinguished ophthalmic surgeon and a senior official of the Board of Customs, they held a series of lunches to publicise the wines. It was such a success that Scott proposed the setting up of ‘a co-operative company’ to buy good quality wines on a regular basis to sell to members. More than 130 years later, The Wine Society, as it is now commonly known, still exists to buy wines directly from growers and offer them to members at fair prices. Life membership is currently only £40 and seems to me to be a worthwhile investment, since it allows access to tastings, special events and a vast range of dependable wines at good prices - from fine vintages for laying down to cheaper wines for everyday drinking.It also makes you feel part of a small club, even one with 100,000 or so members. Unlike a lot of other wine companies, delivery is mostly free and they will also store your wines for a small charge.
I learnt all this on from Ewen Murray of the Society on a trip last Friday to its headquarters - not, as one might imagine, a set of dusty rooms and cellars in St James or the City - but a modern office block and warehouse in Stevenage where they have been since abandoning their London base in 1965. Here they are currently building a new extension which will create what they believe is the biggest wine warehouse in Europe.
I was at Stevenage at their kind invitation to sample some of the wines from their Exhibition range - around 30 wines specially selected from mostly well established and reputable growers in order to demonstrate the typical strengths of any one type of wine, grape or area. So, they have their own Pouilly Fume, their own Chianti Classico, their Pomerol, their Chilean Merlot etc.... Unlike a lot of supermarket 'own labels' this isn't bargain basement stuff - there's nothing less than about £7.50 and you can pay up to £29 for a 2003 Chateauneuf du Pape, (even more for champagne or brandy) but they do represent terrific value for money and absolute dependable value. Out of the twenty wines I tasted, most were excellent. The standout whites were a wonderfully unexpected Gruner Veltliner from Austria (£9.95) - bone dry, light, refreshing, but amazing white pepper flavours on the palate and the lovely grassy, Pouilly Fume (£13.95), perfect for fine, white fish. Among the reds, I loved the Moulin a Vent 2005, (£7.95) a bargain example of a wine I'd never normally consider drinking, the big, serious, ballsy but biodynamic Margaret River Cabernet Merlot (£14.95), the spicy, Pinotage-heavy Cape Blend, (£8.50) the chewy, oaky, hints of tobacco and vanilla tastes of the Sonoma Cabernet Sauvignon (£13.95) and the Gigondas (£10.95) - the best of the bunch, full of the herby,spicy flavours of the south of France.
As Ewan explained over an excellent lunch, what the Society hope is that its members, reassured by their adherence to certain standards, will use the Exhibition range to sample benchmark examples of wines with which they might be unfamiliar and then move onto trying others of the type from its range of 800 wines. Which makes sense. It certainly worked for me with the Veltliner and the Moulin. The Society can be found here: www.thewinesociety.com or 01438 737700