The Oxford Wine Company Wins Regional Wine Merchant of the Year 2010.

The Oxford Wine Company has been awarded the prestigious title of Regional Wine Merchant of the Year for the second time (we won previously in 2007) by the wine trade's most highly respected body, The International Wine Challenge. The awards ceremony took place in the ballroom of The Hilton on Park Lane in London last year where Ted Sandbach and Theo Sloot were presented with the award. The judges who are Masters of Wine and prominent wine journalists sifted through around 300 entries to come up with the winning merchants. Ted says: "It is always very rewarding when we are recognised by fellow members of the trade who look at all entries in an objective manner. We've had many comments about the diversity of our range and the fact that we are prepared to stock an interesting range of wines rather than feeling that we have to justify shelf space. In addition the judges also were impressed by our website and the range of tastings and dinners that we organise."

Virginian Wine Specialists

Ted considers his verdict In October last year Theo and Ted were invited over to Virginia as guests of SUSTA (the Southern United States Trade Association) to taste their way through the top Virginian wineries. The invitation was the result of the work we have done with Chris Parker of New Horizon Wines over the last year to raise awareness of this new and exciting wine area. We started in the south of the state and worked our way northwards, taking in three wineries a day and eventually have ended up listing eight wines in total from Virginia which we consider to be the absolute cream of the crop. This makes The Oxford Wine Company the Virginian wine specialists in the UK. Virginia makes superb (“world class” according to Oz Clarke) Viognier and their Cabernet Franc led Bordeaux blends are excellent too and very similar to Bordeaux classics. We invite you to try these top class wines from this new exciting wine region.

To see our range of Virginian wines please click here. To see photos of the buying trip please click here.
Oxford Wine in Oz Clarke Wine Buying Guide 2011

Oz Clarke has included another five of our wines in his Top 250 Wine Buying Guide for 2011, which was published in October last year.

The Oxford Wine Company has opened new shops in Oxford and Tetbury

The Oxford Wine Company has opened two new retail outlets. One is right on the Botley Road in Oxford between PC World and Currys in a unit that was formerly occupied by Faulkners Motorcycle and Scooters. The other is in Tetbury in Gloucestershire overlooking the car park in the middle of town.

Both shops have tasting bars for you to try before you buy and regular promotions and customer tastings take place on both premises. Our full and extensive range of wines and spirits are stocked and the shops also feature Fine Wine selections where you can peruse classic wines from around the world.

The Oxford Wine Company
167 Botley Road
Oxford OX2 0PB
01865 249500
Open: Monday to Sunday 10am-8pm,
Sunday 11am-6pm
Manager Lee Isaacs

The Oxford Wine Company,
1 Baytree Court,
The Chipping, Tetbury GL8 8ET.
01666 500429
Open: Monday to Saturday 9.30am-6.30pm,
Manager Jackie Wheels

The Oxford Wine Company is Expanding

As part of our expansion following on from having taken over Gloucester based wine merchant Bona Wines in November 2009, we have appointed various new members of staff. Jackie Wheels (ex MD of Bona Wines) has settled in nicely and is busy selling to both trade and retail customers from our brand new shop in Tetbury, Gloucester. Assistant managers Elizabeth Sykes and Celestine Bridgman have joined her in the shop. We have also expanded our warehouse space at Witney to include a large double storage unit to help us cope with the ever growing extra stock that we are now handling daily. As part of the latest stage of The Oxford Wine Company’s expansion there have been a number of new appointments. John Chapman and Neil Gladding have been appointed directors of the company and are Operations Director and Sales Director respectively. John Shuckburgh has replaced Iain Thurgar as Sales Support for the on trade at our Witney head office – John joins us with a wealth of experience with Oddbins and Greene King. We wish Iain and his wife Elizabeth all the best on their amazing three month wine tour of Europe during which they will visit many of our producers. Lee Isaacs has been appointed manager of our Oxford Shop. We welcome Charles Reardon-Smith to our on trade team – he will be developing sales in the Hereford, Worcester and South Wales areas. Aljoscha Wright joins as assistant manager of the Oxford shop and we welcome Louise Ferreira (formerly manager of the Blue Boar in Longworth) also as assistant manager of the Oxford shop. (Louise also works as part of our trade sales team). Lee Hosier has joined us as warehouse assistant helping Gautam Nagpal in his role running our head office warehouse and shop.

Vineyard Visits

Visits to producers abroad has continued apace this year with Jackie jetting off to Bordeaux, Heather visiting the Douro Valley in Portugal and Ted and John off to Jerez and Southern France. Theo and Ted have been flown out to Virginia as guests of the US government to check out the newly established producers there who are fast making their mark with Bordeaux styles. Both Lee and Lucie from the Oxford shop have been on separate trips to Portugal, we have arranged two trips to Italy and Spain for our trade customers and Iain has been flown over to Spain to taste there. Theo has also fitted in a trip to Burgundy to see famous producer Bouchard Pere et Fils and the Hospice de Beaune – so expect to see loads of new wines on the shelves as a result!

The Oxford Wine Company wins Regional Wine Merchant of the year!

IWC Award Winners The International Wine Challenge is the world’s largest, most respected and most influential wine competition in the UK which judges up to 15,000 wines and the county’s top wine merchants every year to select the best of each after careful deliberation. We are delighted that in 2007 this prestigious position was awarded to us – we were named as Regional Wine Merchant of the Year for England West Central.

This means that the IWC judges (mainly Masters of Wine) considered us to be the best wine merchant in this area. This is based on the quality and pricing of our wines, levels of service to our customers, our ability to innovate through The Oxford Times Wine Club, the company magazine, our vineyards in France producing our own wines (The Domaine de la Souterranne range), our website, our tasting rooms and tastings run by Masters of Wine, winemakers and wine journalists, our shop and having a flat screen TV showing educational wine programmes for our customers to mention just a few of the aspects considered by the judges. Ted and John were presented with the award by Tim Atkin, Master of Wine at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, London on Wednesday night 12th September 2007 when the winners were announced.

Domaine de la Souterranne Old Vine Carignan 2007 Included in Top 100 Vin de Pays 2009

Our Domaine de la Souterranne Old Vine Carignan ‘Cuvée Christophe’ 2007 has been selected as one of the Top 100 Vin de Pays available in this country and was on show at the London International Wine Fair at Excel. The 2006 vintage won a Silver Medal – Best in Class in the International Wine and Spirit Competition in 2008. It has also been included in Oz Clarke’s Top 250 Wines for 2009 Guide as has our Domaine de la Souterranne Merlot ‘Cuvée Guillaume’ which won a Bronze Medal in the IWSC. Both wines were made by international wine consultant David Morrison and Raphael Genot using fruit from our rented vineyards in the Languedoc.

Philip Hicks

Internationally renowned artist Philip Hicks was interviewed recently in Oxfordshire Life magazine and was asked the question ‘To whom or what should there be an Oxfordshire memorial?’ He answered ‘To the Hook Norton Brewery and to Ted Sandbach and his team who run The Oxford Wine Company at their Standlake premises. Life would not be the same without them!’

Philip Hicks’ fully illustrated catalogue with 64 pages, 54 colour illustrations and an introduction by the artist is available from www.messums.com