KEN TOWL’s unrelenting quest to uncover the best of Croydon culture sees him sent on some very demanding assignments. Thankfully, he managed to survive his latest

Quite an evening: seven wines and good food, plus good company, was on the menu at the South London Local Wine School

“Spit or swallow?” I asked, though only to myself. A virgin in the wine-tasting world, I was unaware of the etiquette.

The couple across from me put me at my ease the moment I arrived. They asked if I had come far. I said no, that the venue, the Basil and Grape on George Street, was just three tram stops from my Adddiscombe flat.

“Have you,” I asked, “come far?”

“Hertfordshire,” they said.

They had come by train because they would not be able to drive after the seven glasses of wine that we were about to try. It turned out that swallowing was very much de rigeur in these circles. It was, after all, about enjoying one of the finer things in life; and this evening was a celebration of the Gamay grape, the grape that goes into Beaujolais wines.

Beaujolais Nouveau used to be a thing, a marketing coup back in the early 1980s, when wine producers raced to get that year’s produce to Paris, or to London, or New York. Not so much now. But Thursday, November 20, was the day when this year’s crop was released to the world, barely two months since the grapes were plucked from their vines.

We were led in our vinicultural journey by the very capable eonophile owner of the South London Wine School, Roz Lawson. Roz had discovered wine while in France and had taken to it so well that she changed careers, training to be an advanced taster so that she could make a living out of what she loved.

We started with the only white of the evening, a Jean-Marc Burgaud Beaujolais Blanc 2023, which was, as one of my fellow tasters put it, “Quite nice.” I agreed, but felt that the £17.90 per bottle price tag should have offered more than “quite nice”.

The second wine, a JM Aujoux Beaujolais Nouveau (2025, obviously) had gone on sale (for just under a tenner) in London that very day. It had that absolutely instantly recognisable Beaujolais Nouveau taste, one which I had not tasted for more than 20 years. It was like Proustian moment for me, but more French.

“Bubblegum and banana,” said Mr Herfordshire, who, it turned out, had a wine-tasting certificate of his own. The wine seemed to take on these flavours in my mouth as he said it.

A later wine suggested to him “ground white pepper” (definitely not black pepper, he said), and, again, miraculously, it was as if I could feel the heat of pepper on my palate.

The Wine Society’s Beaujolais-Villages 2023, a relative snip at £10.25, was a blackberry-dark fresh-tasting wine. But the greater reaction to it was to its container. It was plastic.

The wine came in a flattened, bottle-adjacent design, crafted from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET). Good for the environment and easier to pack and transport and, apparently, cheaper than the average more-than-decent bottle of Beaujolais.

After this, The Wine Society’s Exhibition Fleurie 2023 was superb (and flowery) and did not seem over-priced at £12.50. The Juliénas Cuvée Marius Jacques Dépagnueux 2022, at exactly a pound more was a complex but smooth red. It packed a punch at 14.5%, too.

I was warned that it was strong but, as I was by this time on glass No5, this felt a little superfluous. The Morgon Stéphane Aviron 2023 was good but perhaps suffered by comparison with its immediate predecessor. As for The Wine Society’s Exhibition Moulin-à-Vent 2019, the longest-aged wine from the region that we were to sample, it was probably a very decent wine but it was wine No7 and, after a couple of top-ups on the earlier wines, and my novice palate was finding it difficult to keep up.

The thing about wine’s flavour is that some of it comes from alcohol – wine No7 weighed in at a respectable 13.5% on the Richter Scale – and so the more you try it, the less discerning you get (I know alcohol content is not measured on the Richter Scale but it gives you some idea of the quality of my notes by this time).

I do know that Paulina, Anthony, Sappho and Patrick, at the other end of the table, all young Croydon professionals, all enjoyed it. All in all, there was a rather convivial atmosphere oiled by great wine and lovely food and the informative but unrushed way we were gently educated by Roz.

Good company: Paulina, Anthony, Sappho and Patrick were among the happy customers at this week’s Beaujolais wine tasting in Croydon

Somewhere after the seventh wine, a large carafe appeared on the table in front of me. “Aha!” I thought, “a bonus.” It seemed to beckon me.

I reached for it but I was informed, just in time, that this carafe contained the dregs, the leftovers, a heady mix of all that had gone before.

I passed it over to Paulina and Anthony and Sappho and Patrick and asked them to pretend to drink it so that I could get a photo of them pretending to drink it. At least, I think that’s what I told them; I was very, very drunk at the time.

Oh yes, the food; it was superb and went well with the wines. A good pairing, they call it. Praise indeed be to cheeses, and olives, and salami and bresaola, all of which did credit to the discernment of the good people in the kitchen of the Basil and Grape.

You might be interested to know there’s another event hosted by the South London Wine School at the Builders’ Arms on Monday December 8: “Christmas Crisps and Wine”, where you can try seven festive pairings such as turkey crisps with Viognier, pigs in blankets crisps with Pinot Noir and stilton crisps with port.

You might not remember it the next day, but you will have had a great time!

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

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