Welcome to the Hamilton Wine Connoisseurs Club. With over 40 years of wine
tastings, wine travel, fellowship and enjoyment we are Hamilton’s and
probably one of New Zealand's oldest wine clubs. We are a friendly,
unpretentious club with a passion to learn about wine, wine terms and
wine areas of the world.
The club has a varied program including
self-hosting where presenters from the club research the wines for the
meeting and present their findings. This usually consists of tasting
three white wines and three red wines accompanied by platters of
cheeses, bread and other nibbles.
These functions are intermixed during the year
with those where we invite winemakers from NZ Wineries ranging from the
very small – Petane Station, Blackridge - to the iconic such as Villa
Maria. These are very popular and there is the opportunity for members
to purchase wines from the wineries at great “mates’ rates”.
We also have tastings of wines celebrating
national and international events: e.g. French wines in July for their
National Day and Italian, German and Spanish wines plus other wine
producing countries for their special occasions, Rugby Highlights -
celebrating NZ, South African, Australia and Argentinian wines. Also on
occasions brown paper bag tastings or by a more realistic name - “Guess
the wine”!
December is time for the Christmas party with many
different wines, lunch and crazy Christmas quizzes followed in January
by a BBQ for those not away on holiday to enjoy each other’s company
with good wine and food….
In May is the AGM (usually very “short and sweet”
at under 30 minutes) before we have an “options tasting” & wine quiz at
a very nominal charge for this event.
We have a substantial wine cellar which we draw
our wines from and a very competent Cellar master.
Each year we try to organise a long weekend Club
trip to a New Zealand wine producing area and usually every two or three
years we expand on this to run a short overseas wine trip. Trips in the
past have been to Hawkes Bay, Wairarapa and Adelaide with the next
planned trip likely to be to Tasmania in 2020.
The club has small newsletter WineTalk which is
produced monthly and keeps you in touch with the latest wines and wine
news from NZ and overseas.
We meet late afternoon on the second Sunday of the
month at a central Hamilton location. The current subscription is $30,
plus $15 for each monthly meeting attended. The financial year runs from
1st June.
For a printable copy of this page then click here