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Wine Society

The British wine society "International Exhibition Cooperative Wine Society" (IECWS) owes its existence to a large wine exhibition in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1874, to which numerous countries had delivered their wines. However, the visitors took little notice, so the Portuguese producers asked the British government for help. A series of luncheons was then organised to publicise the wines. The organisers were the founding fathers who established the Wine Society as a co-operative society in the same year. They were the taxman George E. Scrivenor, the ophthalmologist R. Brudenell Carter and the architect Henry Scott.

The main objective was set to buy wines directly from the producer to ensure authenticity and quality and to offer them to the members at fair prices. Norman MacLeod served as the first chairman. Incidentally, the longest term of office was held by the famous wine writer Edmund Penning-Rowsell (1913-2002) from 1964 to 1987. During his term of office, in 1965, a racking was moved from London to a specially constructed building in Stevenage. Around four million bottles of wine can be stored in the temperature-controlled halls there, some of which are delivered by the company's own fleet of delivery vans. The stock includes over 800 wines from all over the world.

The association, briefly named the "Wine Society", is owned by its members, whereby each member may only own one share certificate. Today, a share certificate costs 40 euros and entitles the holder to lifelong membership with no annual fee and no obligation to buy. There are no dividends, the share certificates can be inherited. The only condition for membership is a minimum age of 18 years. New members are either proposed by members or an application is made. Famous members in early years were the Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1939), the inventor of penicillin Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) and the English Prime Minister Lord John Russel (1792-1878). There are a total of 300,000 members worldwide, of which around 100,000 are active and buy wines for around one million pounds per week. The wines have to be paid for in cash immediately upon ordering. With a turnover of over 50 million pounds, the Wine Society is one of the largest British wine trading companies. The current chairman is Sarah Evans and the chief executive is Oliver Johnson. In Australia there is a similar, independent institution. See also under Viticultural Institutions.

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Prof. Dr. Walter Kutscher

In the past, you needed a wealth of encyclopaedias and specialist literature to keep up to date in your vinophile professional life. Today, Wine lexicon from wein.plus is one of my best helpers and can rightly be called the "bible of wine knowledge".

Prof. Dr. Walter Kutscher
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The world's largest Lexicon of wine terms.

26,379 Keywords · 46,983 Synonyms · 5,323 Translations · 31,713 Pronunciations · 202,075 Cross-references
made with by our author Norbert F. J. Tischelmayer. About the Lexicon

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