Sampling the selection at Love Wine in Woodstock

In the centre of Woodstock, opposite the Bear Hotel, and close to the Post Office, you will discover Love Wine, a new retail outlet offering a unique wine tasting experience, which promises to open up the world of wine through a selection of tastings that are not normally available anywhere else in Oxfordshire.

State-of-the-art wine dispensing technology. which keeps the wines fresh and at the perfect temperature and in the required amount to enable the wine to be appreciated but not just quaffed.

There are 20 different wines available for tasting at any given time, which enables you to try before you buy. Three different tasting experiences are on offer. The first aptly named The Woodstock provides you with four different tastings, The Blenheim provides you with ten tastings and finally The Churchill, which offers the chance to sample the more expensive and iconic wines. Proprietor Richard Leonard suggests that for this choice you allow at least two hours to enjoy and absorb this experience — because ‘experience’ it is. Love Wines offers the ultimate when it comes to wine tasting in what can only be described as a gloriously large glass that enables you to swirl the wine to take in its aroma to your heart’s content.

Whilst in the tasting room customers can take as much time as they like exploring and comparing the subtleties and complexities that trigger their taste buds. Richard is proud that historical and contextual interests add to the wines on offer, most of which are exclusive to Love Wine.

The technology that ensures you get an accurate measure of wine served at the perfect temperature is simple, yet impressive. Having paid for the required number of tastings, that information is fed on to a small device for you to use. If you have a smart phone however, the number of tastings can be put on to that and you can use at your leisure.

Love Wine, Woodstock (the name was chosen by Richard’s wife Andrea, who also designed the heart-shaped labels), stocks wines you will be proud to take home, or offer to your host at a dinner party. Actually, you can go further by inviting your host and other guests to visit the tasting room prior to the event. With Richard’s guidance, the party can begin by selecting a wine to start proceedings and then gradually work through the menu to find suitable wine matches for the rest of the meal. This idea is catching on fast and adds an extra dimension to a dinner party. With Richard’s help, the wine will certainly match the menu, too.

And there is more — look in the window as you pass the shop and you will notice wines named Woodstock. The perfect gift for visitors to take home with them as a present for friends, a memento, or as the perfect wine to serve at a Woodstock dinner party. But this is no mere tourist gimmick, there’s far more to the Woodstock wines than that.

At the turn of the 20th century the Townsend family, headed by William Louis Townsend, left Woodstock and headed for Australia where they established an estate in South Australia which comprised of a brick-built well (absolutely necessary Down Under where water is precious), a vineyard and an orchard. They named the estate Woodstock, a title it has retained ever since.

Enter the Woodstock estate in South Australia and you will notice a replica of the medieval stocks which stand but a few yards from Love Wine in the centre of Woodstock. These original stocks were once used for the public punishment of townsfolk who had over-imbibed. A wine named the Stocks, sourced exclusively from 31 rows of old Shiraz vines planted in Australia circa 1900, has been named after these stocks and is now on sale at Love Wine. This wine and the Woodstock wines are particularly special as the vines are all tended by hand and, if required, leaf-plucked or crop-thinned to ensure even ripening and good concentration of berry fruitiness.

Richard sums up Love Wine: “We are an independent wine merchant serving the local community, the environs of Woodstock and the city whilst underpinning Oxford’s place in wine history and tradition in British culture, a city where once 80 wine merchants over a 300-year period plied their trade.” He points out that until Love Wine opened last month, there were just four independent wine merchants in the county.

As Richard reminds us, the joy of selecting a wine by its taste rather than its label is important. Good quality wine should not be rushed, but sipped gently and savoured; Love Wine offers us the chance to do that.