2019
Authentique Wine Cellars
Willamette ValleyOREGON, COMPOSED
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2014
Egon Müller
Mosel
STEEP SLOPES AND PRECISE FRUIT
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hello@stressedyeastsociety.com
The Stressed Yeast Society
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WSET School, London
(in alphabetical order)
London
Lavinia Cremonese
Florence
Lynn de Vries
Amsterdam
Mark Haigh
London
Irene Lopez
Bilbao
Sophie Milnes
London
Miguel Silva
Lisbon
Peder Sortland
Stavanger
Jennifer Thörn
Stockholm
Ben Thuriaux
Brighton
Margriet Vande Zande
Beaconsfield
4.6 - 4.8
4.3 - 4.5
4.0 - 4.2
3.5 - 3.9
Ad-hoc
Stellar
Remarkable
Worthy
Decent
Disappointing
Logroño (La Rioja)
Spain
18-23 June 2026
Last Updated 24.10.31
NOTES ON STARTING A WINE CLUB
Peder Sortland
There are the small, informal clubs where friends meet in each other’s houses and share and taste wine bottles brought for the night. There are the large and established wine clubs or societies which has as objective to last for eternity, to develop significant club cellars and a preferably a grand facility for members.
Membership
We first discussed; 1) who should be core member targets, 2) what ought to be our maximum and minimum limits in terms of number of members, 3) membership fee level and 4) what should the membership fee cover.
We quickly agreed that the membership fee should cover all fixed costs, primarily rent and that each club night should be prized to cover its cost for the night.
We then defined the core members to target. We turned to our local wine school where we had all been WSET students at different levels and at different points in time. We pitched the club as an informal “alumni” setting for ex school students where they could pursue their interest post completing their respective courses. We then figure that a membership population between 30-60 for us would be a suitable target since the club would be administered on a voluntary basis. We designed a first semester program along with a pitch and issued the invitation. The response was a bit overwhelming, and we closed the door when we passed 80 paid memberships to ensure that we would be able to deliver with quality. The membership fee was set at around 110 euros.
Club Facility
In approaching the local wine school, we also discussed co-sharing of the leased premises that the wine school already used. The advantage for us being that the facility already has everything we would need for wine tasting. We struck an arrangement that the wine school would receive the membership fee in full in exchange for us getting access to the facilities for free. Put differently a no risk variable facilities cost structure for the wine club.
Club Nights
We aimed for club nights with either 10 or 20 tickets (multiple of 10s to fit bottle sizes and minimize unit costs for members). We organised ourselves with an academic year approach having around 10 club nights during the fall and the same during the spring. We were able piggyback on to the electronic payment solution already in place for the wine school to simplify administration. We issue club nights invites around 14 days before the event on a first come first serve basis. We meet before each semester and agree themes for each night and who would be the responsible and who would assist.
We are two people for each night where one act as the sommelier and one is responsible for the wines and corresponding presentations. With what we considered our membership success we have opted for 20 tickets for each night. So far, we have been fortunate to sell out. We typically have a semester opening night “bring your own glass” where we present the program for the semester along with wines from a region or country. From there it can be grapes in focus, regions or countries and so on. Quite early we were approached by wine importers, and we now tend to have a producer night each semester as well. Since we are in a country with a retail wine monopoly, and we are not in a wine producing country, we have ample access to wines from all over the world through an on-line portal and all wine is ordered by the responsible for the night. We typically shoot for 6 wines x 2 bottles for a club night.
Formalities
When we issued the invitation, we issued a charter with rules for the club. We who took the initiative constitutes the board for the first year. We are also responsible for club nights during this year. We have opted for a very simple accounting system since the club is not going to generate profits. The membership fee goes un-cut to the wine school whose premises we are renting. Each club night is priced according to cost of wine and nibbles. Those of us who would be responsible for club nights committed to take an obligatory e-learning course from the authorities dealing with responsibilities relating to serving of alcohol.
Experience so far
It is still early days but so far it has been a very positive experience. It appears that we found a sweet spot of people who have been educated in wine, but who found themselves without a network of people with the same interest to further develop their interest post studies. As such, members are typically not in the wine trade, but people that see their wine interest as a hobby.
- PS