Wine festival planned for Oxford

A new wine festival in Oxford is planned for this August Bank Holiday weekend.

The festival is the brainchild of Chris Bowling and Max Richardson and is scheduled to take place in the Oxford Union building on 23-24 August.

Spread out through the historic buildings, there will be rooms dedicated to English wine, fine and rare wines, as well as wines from the Old and New Worlds and emerging regions.

The festival also promises: “tutored tasting sessions led by some of the world’s most respected wine authorities, as well as food and live music.”

Both Bowling and Richardson have experience in event organisation and management and Bowling also runs the Georgian and Hungarian wine societies.

Bowling told the drinks business that he was inspired to do the event after many trips to the Budapest wine festival.

“It’s a brilliant event,” he said, “with an incredible atmosphere and I wanted to recreate something like that in the UK.”

He chose Oxford, not just because he lives there but also because, “it’s a great place to do it, you have lots of tourists coming in and there’s a very educated wine public in Oxford.”

Both Bowling and Richardson are currently in discussions with merchants, wineries and agents to secure wines for the event and apparently have had several confirmations as well as a lot of interest.

He said he hoped that the tasting programme would be finalised by next month and there were some masters of wine interested in hosting tutored sessions.

More information on the festival can be found here.