Corrigan's Mayfair

For A Wine Tasting Lunch

For a first ever* wine tasting, this was totally pimp! On our arrival, we were lead to a private room with a long dining table and seated with around 15 other guests. First things to note were the number of glasses per person, the long list of items on the menu (we assumed that these must surely just be options!?) and our "Golden Rules to Wine Matching" guide - probably best to read it before drinking anything, even better idea to take a picture of it to read on a clear day.


Once we had got settled, our sommelier introduced himself and also introduced us to what was going to be a very long and boozy lunch. We were informed that a spittoon was optional but all agreed that this would be a waste of perfectly good wine. 

So many glasses and these are all just for one person!

We began by going through the golden rules for food and wine matching, then we got started with some practical exercises, like:

• smelling "wine smells" in vials, which we had to try and label, e.g. lemon, cherry, grass, etc., using a defined list of possible wine scents;
• passing around a dark glass and trying to guess whether the wine is red or white (it was chilled and sweet-smelling like a white dessert wine but it was in fact a red);
• observing the legs of various wines to determine alcohol content;
• trying out different ways of sipping wines to taste (i.e. slurping and gurgling).

Hints and tips (don't think we'd even started at this point so the crooked picture is inexcusable - apologies)

After the practical exercises came the exciting bit...wine matching!

THE Menu

To our surprise, the first course on the table was EVERYTHING from the list of Starters...sweeeeet! 


We paired the first item on the menu with a bubbly pink number and every item after that was paired with something completely different and in the same quantity as the first. Needless to say, never mind about being "double-parked", I had reached a new low - triple-parked, which resulted in knocking it back, and which in turn resulted in a strange eyesight phenomenon.

The Starters

One of the Middle Courses

Another Middle Course and example of triple-parking

Dessert and is that...almost quadruple-parked?!

I cannot recommend Corrigan's for wine-tasting highly enough, it was fantastic! And the best part about going at lunchtime is that when you get out in the daylight, there are plenty of things to do nearby, and attempting any of them when that jolly can be very amusing. Or, if you're more sensible (not really my thing btw), you could just go home, sleep it off and still have the rest of the evening.

*Memory loss frequently occurs after copious amounts of wine so this statement may be unreliable.


Corrigan's Mayfair, 28 Upper Grosvenor Street,  London, W1K 7EH, Tel: 020 7499 9943