Charity Wine Tasting at Magnum Wine 8 February

We had a very pleasant evening at Magnum Wine in Wood Street on Thursday, for our first event of the year, a charity fundraiser. There was a great mix of Friends of Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, and people who had bought tickets from Magnum and didn't know very much about the current museum, or the plans for the new one, but were keen to know more.
Brian Saunders, owner of the shop, introduced us to a selection of hand picked wines and led us gently through the tasting, encouraging a swirling of a glass here, a sniffing there, until we were able to drink more intelligently than before, possibly.
We started the evening with some fizz, not prosecco because it tends to be mass produced, the British apparently now they have a taste for it, drink 80% of the prosecco produced.
This was followed by 3 white wines, my favourite being the Te Mata Cape Crest Sauvignon Blanc 2013, Hawkes Bay NZ. We had some delicious Cornish Brie after the last white wine and before the first red wine, then we had double Gloucester before my favourite red, the Casas Del Bosque Reserve Carmenere 2015  Rapel Valley Chile, we then had some Ardennes Pate before the last red wine, and some Taw Valley Cheddar before moving onto the port.
The port was De Bortoli Old Boys 21 yr old Tawny, absolutely gorgeous stuff, and we finished up with home made carrot cake.
It was lovely to see our logo on the wine tasting sheet as we walked in, such a thoughtfully prepared evening.

I bought the wines I've mentioned. I can give anyone who wants to know what the others were, the full list.

 Here are some general photos of those present

 And Brian behind the counter giving lots of background information on the wines.

 I think this photo below was after the event had finished and people wanted to buy some of the wines tasted.

 Brian was assisted in the pouring of wine and handing out of cheese, pate and cake by his brother, Sarah and Hannah Dosanjh. In this lovely painting below, you can see Sarah in the middle of the picture behind the counter, and Brian on the right.

It was an absolutely fabulous evening, Brian is a fantastic entertainer and raconteur and knows his wines.
Thank you also to those who came along, bought raffle tickets, donated raffle tickets and generally made it such a wonderful fundraising event.
We raised £693 which goes towards restoring paintings, buying artworks, sponsoring exhibitions, refurbishing the archaeology gallery and improving our communications.