Our First Tours

We’ve been open to the public for little over a month now and it’s been quite exciting here at the winery. We kicked off with our bi-monthly Saturday winery tours on November 9th and it proved to be a popular event. Gavin, our winemaker, happily took our guests around the winery, explaining the wine processes and all the equipment in a fun and informative way.

After a brief talk about the winery’s goings-on, we got down to the fun part where Gavin pulled out his pipette (not what you’re thinking, it’s a long thin glass pipe to withdraw wine from the barrels) and guests were able to sample the wine direct from the barrel. If you’ve never done it before, I can tell you, it’s a unique experience  to taste young wine. We weren’t able to sample all the wines from the barrel as we have to be careful we don’t open the barrels too often but there were other samples from the stainless steel tanks to try.

Adam Talks About the Winery

As well as the kick-off of our Saturday tours, we also inaugurated our first Winemaker For a Day class on November 25th. The class was full and great fun. Participants learned about the components of wine as well as the basics of blending before getting stuck in with their own single variety wines to blend them into a classic Bordeaux blend. At the end of the day, we took everyone’s recipe, blended them up in our lab, returned them to their rightful owners and sent everyone happily home to enjoy the fruits of that day’s labours.

We will be continuing with our tours in 2014 as well as the Winemaker For A Day classes and other such themed events. For more information, pop over to the events page or give us a call, 0207 381 7873.

Where We Are Now

Last Monday, our last load of grapes, Barbera from Piemonte, arrived at the winery and we got to work. The Barbera was a last minute replacement for the unfortunate loss of Sauvingon Blanc and Merlot we were supposed to be getting from Bordeaux.

Despite that, the Italian grapes were more than up to the task, coming in looking beautiful and sailing through the sorting table in the winery. After triage, the grapes were quickly put into the stainless steel tanks and within a day or so we had added our yeast and let them start fermenting. The Barbera is still fermenting as we, er, type, but we expect it to be done soon and going into barrel. Gavin has also filled 2 integral barrels with the Barbera grapes to see how they ferment in the oak.

We had some juice left from the 4.6 tonnes of grapes so Gavin decided to make a rosé! Exciting stuff! The rosé is already in tank and  we’re hoping it will be ready in time for our launch party. As there was so little of it we’ll probably save it for in-house events, so if you get a space on one of our first public tours in November you might be lucky enough to try it!

Gavin at Work in the Winery

We’re really busy right now getting ready for our grand opening in a few weeks. We’ll be giving tours of the winery everySaturday, starting on Nov 9th. Tours will cost £15 including a tasting of some of our wines, and afterwards you can have a drink and something to eat from our pop up bar.

If you want a bit more in-depth experience in the winery, we’ll also be offering “Winemaker for a Day” sessions, where you will learn what’s in a winery, how wine is made, and even blend your own bottle to take home.

We'll also be holding regular Supper Clubs on the second Monday of each month, starting with Nathan Green, head chef at Michelin star restaurant “Restaurant Story”, on the 11th of November. Be warned, we think that one’s going to sell out very quickly, but if you don’t get tickets, December will bring another exciting chef to London Cru.

Be sure to join our mailing list if you haven’t already. This way you’ll be the first to hear about events at London Cru and when tickets go on sale. We’ll also be offering some free tours once we open to the people on our mailing list, but you didn’t hear that from me!