If you follow me on Facebook and Instagram you may remember the wine tasting event I attended back in February. This event was organised and hosted by Humble Grape, wine and event company based in London. Founded in 2009 by James Dawson it has now an extended portfolio of unique wines imported from local, family owned vineyards from countries including Argentina, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, USA and new regions and wines are constantly being introduced.
I met Humble Grape at the Moulden Marketing Destination Workshop and was invited to experience their wine tasting event. The event I attended was one of their public events, Rhône Valley wine tasting and other upcoming events include Artisan Wine of South Africa, Wine Meets Tech, Burgundy and Italia Gran Turismo. The events take place about 2.5 hours at central London locations including The Haciendas Club and One Canada Square. I spent a very fun, relaxing, entertaining and educational evening and met fellow wine lovers. To accompany the wine Humble Grape served cheese, chorizo, Iberian ham, chorizo, almonds and olives.
On the corporate side, Humble Grape has the capacity to host wine tasting events for groups from 10 to 300+ people. They offer a wide variety of event themes such as team building events with blind tasting, quizzes etc. and other topics such as “business of wine”, giving an inside look at the wine trade, including wine investment, value for money ratio and wine tourism.
Within this short period of time Humble Grape has established its brand name and decided to expand onto the high street wine business. Recently they launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise £250,000 to open a wine bar and retail shop in/ near Shoreditch. When writing this post over 80% of investment has been already funded!
Last week I had the pleasure to attend their crowdfunding party in Level 39 One Canady Square in Canary Wharf. Investors, customers and friends came to congratulate and celebrate with Humble Grape team. The evening started with a talk of Jeff Lynn, CEO and Co-Founder of Seedrs, the crowdfunding platform and followed by a talk from James to tell more about Humble Grape. James shared facts and figures for investors, talked how the four elements Brand, Technology, Price and Product are key differentiators and talked about future expansion plans.
After the speeches everyone could taste three different wines and network. The wines which were picked for the evening were two French, Domaine André Bonhomme Viré-Clessé Vieilles Vignes, 2010, Mâconnais, Burgundy and Domaine Mathias Mâcon-Chaintré 2010 Burgundy and one Portuguese, Quinta de Saes Colheita Tinto, 2010, Dão. Myself and everyone I talked to just loved the Portuguese wine. I am definitely going to order it for my next event.
That was a fantastic evening with Humble Grape and supporters, good choice of venue and of course, good wines.
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