is vastly varied but something that Miles believes is key to those at entry level, he explains: “We like helping those who have just got in to the industry so we can be alongside them through their career and our clients really like that too. We like to start at the entry level and follow it through whenever we can.”
Miles feels that a business must have knowledge on wine if they’re trying to deliver a quality experience. He said: “If you’re a quality operator and if you’re trying to deliver a quality experience to your customer it is absolutely critical you have, at the very minimum, one person on the floor at all times with knowledge on that wine.”
However Jascots found that this wasn’t the case when they recently commissioned a survey for London restaurant goers. Miles said: “The survey asked how they find the experience of drinking wine in restaurants and the results were quite disturbing actually.
“People find wine is served at the wrong temperature, the sparkling wines aren’t fizzy and out of condition, the staff don’t know what wine to offer and I think there are some operators, not our clients, who don’t understand how engaged people are with wine.
“So yes, training is absolutely critical.”
It is a hope that with more training it will lead to further knowledge on the fact that England does produce great wine and that it’s not all about the French offerings. Miles said: “No, there isn’t enough awareness on English wine.
“It is growing, and in terms of how fast the wine market evolves the awareness of English wine has grown pretty fast, but it’s got a long way to go and it will get there. In the next five years people will realise that we are making sparkling wine in this country and that it is every bit as good as champagne.
“You’ll start to see that every good restaurant and good venue will have English wine on their wine list and that’s going to really explode people’s awareness of it. So it’s growing really fast but it’s got some way to go yet.”
Of course French wine can’t be ignored as Miles says: “It’s not that wine in France is any better than elsewhere but it’s the wine culture in France that is so varied. There are six or seven wine regions that are really distinct and all make world-class wine, of quite different styles.”
But with this week being English Wine Week Miles feels that weeks like this are important although feels that perhaps when we are celebrating food weeks that wine should be equally included. He said: “I don’t necessary think that we need lots of separate wine weeks, I think food and wine go well together so what I would like to see more of is during these foods week wine is included as an ingredient that goes alongside your food.
“For Cheese Week we did a big thing of matching cheese with wine and making a splash, that’s a good opportunity that a lot of competitors are missing as people are so in love with.
“If anything weeks like this give us something to work with and the engage our clients with. Even if it’s just calling our clients up and saying English Wine Week is coming up let’s make a bit of fuss about those English wines that you have on your lists.”
