Wine Club
Beneath every spire a cellar
A former Oxford college cellar master explains the abiding importance of wine to fellows and students and shares his memories of some remarkable wines
Apart from libraries and other centrally administered faculties, the University of Oxford is made up of 45 colleges and halls, all possessing a wine cellar. As a result, the wine culture of the place is immense and indelible, and a sizeable minority of dons – the term describes any fellow of a college – have built highly respectable private cellars of their own.
Frequently a case of misunderstanding when a tourist asks ‘Where is the University?’, the colleges collectively comprise the university despite being self-governing, quasi-autonomous legal entities. Their wine cellars are correspondingly as diverse and different as they are, and they might be compared to a large extended family, exhibiting a sibling likeness when viewed from afar but proving utterly unique when encountered in person.
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