Are you ready to put the trials and tribulations of the last few months behind you? Then come along to your Society's Christmas Tasting!

This year Nesta has organised an evening of group wine tasting focusing on wine made from classic grapes which we all know and love. The wines will be produced from all over the world and together you can taste, chat and work out which wine you are drinking and where it was produced. We have eight intrepid members of your Society who have selected some great Classics for us all to enjoy, the wine will be tasted blind and our presenters will give you feedback on the group decisions and give more background to the wines. Hopefully the evening will provide Christmas cheer, add to your wine knowledge and provide inspiration when choosing wines for the festive season.

We start our year by welcoming back Tim Syrad. Tim is well known to many of our members as both an excellent presenter and also an organiser of great wine tours. This time, Tim will present a selection of wines from the Ribera region of Spain. Situated in the north west of the country, the Ribera is one of Spain's most prestigious wine regions. Whilst there is some white wine made, the focus is predominantly on the reds and the tempranillo grape dominates. Through his many tours to the Ribera, Tim has access to some great wines and we look forward to tasting some of the best tonight.

Now a regular feature in our calendar, Jim "Order Please" King and Keith "The Magnum" Cooper will be joined this year by Alastair "No Short Measures" Dudley. Together, they will present a selection of their favourite wine gems. The tasting will be preceded by a brief AGM.

In March we welcome Stuart Porter on his first visit to our Society. Stuart is a Sales Executive for Corney & Barrow, representing the Southern Home Counties. He's worked in the wine industry for 20 years and has been with Corney & Barrow for 9 years. Our tasting will take us down under to focus on the wines of three specific estates. From Australia, we'll be tasting the wines of The Lane winery in Adelaide Hills. From New Zealand, we'll be tasting the wines of Elephant Hill in Hawkes Bay and Eradus in the Awatare Valley. Tastings which focus on specific wineries are always interesting and great fun. So this is one not to miss!

Grab yourself a glass of wine and join us on Zoom for an evening of relaxed fun as we test your brains with a Fun Wine-based Quiz.   I promise not to make the questions too difficult to give everyone a chance to participate.  The emphasis of the evening is to have a fun time and to be able to see some familiar faces.   All of the questions will be multiple choice.   So even if you don't have much wine knowledge, you can still guess the answers as we go through. Friends and family all welcome.

Grab yourself a glass of wine and join us on Zoom for an evening of relaxed fun as we test your brains with a Fun Wine-based Quiz.   I promise not to make the questions too difficult to give everyone a chance to participate.  And this time I promise not to include any questions on the history of the Whitewater Valley Wine Society! The emphasis of the evening is to have a fun time and to be able to see some familiar faces.   All of the questions will be multiple choice.   So even if you don't have much wine knowledge, you can still guess the answers as we go through. Friends and family all welcome.

For our first real-life get together in a long time, we have organised an exclusive, private visit to the award winning Greyfriars winery and vineyard, set just off the Hog's Back between Farnham and Guildford. This will be an evening tour on Wednesday 14th July, starting at 6.30pm, which will allow us to benefit from the long summer evenings.

For our second outdoor gathering of the summer, we are meeting Al Fresco at The Falcon at 7.30pm on the evening of Wednesday 11th August. The Falcon is a pub/restaurant in the beautiful village of Rotherwick, just 3 miles from Hook. Many of you will know The Falcon as we've had several Society events there in previous years, which we have enjoyed very much.

Our group will have a reserved area in their garden, where we will be served a BBQ style meal, prepared in the kitchen by the Falcon's highly regarded chef and his team, overseen by Falcon owner Lee.

We return to The Raven on 8th September!  And I'm deleted to tell you that our evening will be presented by Mark Bedford, owner of local merchant Caviste.  Mark has has been a loyal supporter of our Society for many years, so it is very appropriate that he should lead our first evening tasting for some time.

This month we welcome Tony Hill of Bordeaux and Beyond.   Tony will take us on a "Wine Tour de France", covering many different appellations, some famous and some not do famous.  Tony will give the storty behind the wines and the reasons why he decided to import them. Bordeaux and Beyond are a specialist wine importer concentrating on wines from small independent vignerons in France, not usually available elsewhere.