Wine Tributaries - Articles

Welcome to the Wine Tributaries cellar, our archive of some past articles.

Some of the wineries, winemakers, and topics we have covered over the years for Wine Tributaries often find their way as links on other wine sites. We decided to include some as a way to pay tribute to the wines and people who who have shaped the wine industry.


Vinopolis, City of Wine and Surprises
by Tim Hayes & John Koetzner

 

Wine Tasting in London? Surely we jest. Yet, London has many attractions that appeal to visitors. Among them are Buckingham Palace, Harrods, the Albert Hall, and so much more. Our palates were stronger than our urges to visit the Queen of England's residence and we had already seen so many other sites. So, we chose a more adventurous and impressive venue for part of our tourist trappings while in London. If you have not visited Vinopolis, the City of Wine, it is a must-see tour, because it offers a grand opportunity to learn about viticulture history and regions, tastings of wines from around the world, a first class restaurant, and a museum that is part wine, part art.


It is by far the most outrageous wine venture to date. Even Robert Mondavi will have to go some distance to match the breadth that Vinopolis offers in the way of entertaining people as well as educating them when his wine education center opens in the Napa Valley.
Imagine the creators of special effects for Cats and Miss Saigon doing special effects for a wine center. Then, think about what they would do for a museum. Okay, you are beginning to get the picture. The place is outrageous.


We were extremely fortunate to be given a tour by Vinopolis founder, Duncan Vaughn-Arbuckle. He shared how his original 100,000.00 pound venture (approximately $160,000.00) turned into twelve-year quest that became a thirty-three million-pound (approximately $46,000,000.00) reality. Mentioning that London may seem unlikely for such an adventure, Vaughn-Arbuckle joked, "I'm so ashamed it's not located in France." Yet, what stands today originally started as museum of international agriculture that grew into a place for wine and education, food, and banqueting.


After finding a location in London's South Bank neighborhood (near the new Globe Theatre and Tate Museum) Vaughn-Arbuckle negotiated a lease that would allow him to put the project forward along with 550 partners. He noted that the region was where most anything illicit or pleasurable, even prostitution, took place. He jokingly added, "We're hoping to turn it back into the pleasure center of London along with the Globe and the Tate."


From the outside, Vinopolis looks like a sleek new age building. It is sexy curves and lots of glass. On the inside, it is that and more. It mixes old-world and high tech to make a unique wine experience. One meanders amongst the brick and mortar that has been revealed through demolition to show part of the structure that supports the railway that rumbles overhead from time to time. It is 120,000 square feet of building that allows one to wander through nearly two acres of exhibits leisurely.


At the core of the tour is a headset that has four hours of tour information. Visitors may choose from six different languages and decide how much of the tour they want to experience. Once the unit is turned on, it automatically catapults one into the new region when a new room in the tour is entered. If you walk into the Burgundy room, for example, a one-minute background commentary on Burgundy automatically begins. The ruins of a Citroen are center stage. There are numbered displays that allow one to pick and choose what you would like to learn simply punching in the number of the display.


The early displays invite you to experience ancient winemaking and a couple French appellations. Then a glass elevator with small bubbling lights attracts visitors to a second floor and Champagne. Each room has its own unique twist on the region and its viticulture, and each has its own wild take on the region in general.


For example, the Australian display is done in a mock airliner, with only the tray tables missing from the seat in front of you. A film talks about the growing regions, and growers talk about grape growing.
California is represented with old-fashioned 35-millimeter cameras, making a Hollywood connection. There is a nostalgic charm about when one watches the information about California viticulture. Although the U.S. is not represented by its incredible wine industry presence, a map shows all the growing regions in the U.S. that are currently in wine production.


Even regions that are mentioned infrequently in wine publications such as India are represented at Vinopolis. So, the tour has incredible value in educating people about the breadth that winemaking has had in the history and lives of people from the majority of cultures.


According to Vaughn-Arbuckle, and it was confirmed during our visit, the most popular attraction is the Italy room that has Vespa motor scooters. Each scooter invites visitors to sit on it and view a rear-projection video that allows one to watch a virtual tour of Italy's growing regions in the windshield. No helmets are needed. Once again, the headset becomes a crucial part of the tour as it provides the narration.


Yet, not everything at Vinopolis is based on hearing the tour. There are numerous visual displays that are self-explanatory such as a grapevine that shows the taproot and the canes. Then, part of the fun comes with sniffing olfactory displays where one can smell the aromas that are associated with Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. These add to the whole experience even before one takes a sip of wine.
Of course, tasting is another whole purpose of visiting Vinopolis too. We are visiting to be introduced to some wines that we would not have encountered, nor had the opportunity to taste in a tasting room in the U.S. Thus, one's five initial tasting tickets can go quite easily if one has an adventurous palate. Fortunately, more tasting tickets are available for sale in the tasting areas.


The day we visited, there were four such tasting rooms set up and we had wines from South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Hungary, Portugal, and Spain. California wines available were from, the Hess Collection from Napa Valley, Fetzer, Mondavi, Fetzer, and Gallo of Sonoma. We found the tasting staff to be educated about the wines they were pouring and our particular tasting host, Vincent Monnier, was especially knowledgeable, giving us accurate descriptions of what to expect in aroma, taste, and finish in the wines we tasted.
Other wines rotate through the tasting tables, meaning that one never knows what will be available amongst the 150 wines for tasting. But once again, that's part of the delight in visiting. There are numerous surprises. There were even more regions to sample, but we also wanted to partake of their restaurant that has people visiting just to have the food.


Before going to our meal, we visited the Hess Collection that is an exhibition space devoted to contemporary art. Donald Hess (Yes, the proprietor of the Hess Collection wines from Mt. Veeder in the Napa Valley and a partner in Vinopolis) had sponsored an exhibition by Franz Gertsch, an artist who made tempera paintings that covered walls and looked as life-life as photographs. So, our visit to Vinopolis was remarkably like a visit to a contemporary art museum as well.


Other detours prior to going for a meal were the wine shop and the gift shop. The wine shop had signs indicating appellations, and it its floor space was filled with numerous enticing wines. While visitors from the U.S. are a bit limited in the amount they can carry home, Vinopolis does have the ability to ship to different regions of the world. In fact, they even have developed a website for selling the wines available from producers who show wines at Vinopolis.


We continued to the gift shop where Hugh Johnson's line of glassware competes with Riedel crystal for wine connoisseurs' attention amidst a vast array of other wine-related gifts such as corkscrews, foil cutters, decanters, stoppers, pour spouts, books, and more.


Even the Danish royal family has toured and picked up a quantity of wine cooler bags from the shop. (They do make nice picnic bags for those summer days when a cool bottle of Viognier or Chardonnay is needed to moisten the palate.) We finally picked up a few items for friends back home and continued onward to a meal. Yet, Vinopolis is also a web presence, selling gifts at its website: www.vinopolisdirect.co.uk, so that is another option for finding some unique wine gifts that enophile in your life.
While lighter meals or snacks are the fare at The Wine Wharf, a small café in Vinopolis, we decided to visit the Cantina Vinopolis. It has a fairly extensive wine bar where one can order a glass of wine while chatting with friends or waiting for a table. Our meal happened to be one of the most impressive we experienced in London and it topped off our visit quite nicely.


Finding Vinopolis is fairly easy for anyone who navigates London on the tube, by bus, or by train. The closest tube stations are London Bridge and Southwark.


Vinopolis will undergo a few cosmetic changes in January 2001 as Vaughn-Arbuckle promises even more surprises for visitors in the future. Much like each vintage, it appears that Vinopolis will continue to grow with the seasons. So far, the vintages look promising, and we'll never know what to expect at the next turn.

 

 

 

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Copyright ©2004 Wine Tributaries, Tim Hayes, John Koetzner & Margie Koetzner and their licensors. All rights reserved.