Recently voted among the top 10 national venues for events by event industry professionals*, alongside such established venues as the Science Museum, London Zoo, Hammersmith Palais, Natural History Museum, Madame Tussauds and the V&A Museum, Vinopolis has built a reputation for the quality and variety of events at its Bankside location over the seven years since it opened its doors.

Malcolm Ball, Chief Executive, Vinopolis said ‘We’re delighted by the latest results and grateful to everybody who has chosen to hold their event with us in the past year. We have now established a strong position within the events industry. Our guests are genuinely amazed by the variety of contemporary and classic spaces that exist within our site. The combination of wine and food in relaxed surroundings is vitally important to us and is reflected in the success of our events, which, without any exaggeration or fear of contradiction, offer an experience which does not exist anywhere else.’

Vinopolis is the world’s only venue dedicated to the history, production and enjoyment of wine. Developing over a three-acre site beneath 140-year-old Victorian railway arches, alongside London Bridge and Borough Market, a range of spectacular spaces within the Vinopolis vaults includes areas for banquets, conferences, meetings, exhibitions, wine tastings, weddings, civil partnership ceremonies and private parties. Six distinct areas, underneath 21 arches, regularly welcome party sizes of 10 to 1250 guests.

In the last year, Vinopolis has catered for 40,000 guests, 10,000 of whom visited in December 2005. Gavin Marshall, General Manager of the event management team, ‘taste…VINOPOLIS’, said: ‘We had a particularly good party season. I don't think we truly expected the year to be as successful as it has been. It was the first time the ‘taste...VINOPOLIS’ team sold the venue exclusively and we had a fantastic response. Over Christmas 2005 alone, the culinary team served over 4,000 three course dinners, 10,000 Japanese noodle boxes, 1,000 fork buffets, 30,000 bottles of Japanese beer, 700 bottles of Sake and 5,000 bottles of wine.’ 

The latest event package is One Night in Havana, which will fill Vinopolis with live salsa music, contemporary Cuban cuisine, wine, beer and refreshing Mojito cocktails. The event, in conjunction with Crown Special Event Caterers, is available for between 25 and 1250 guests and will run throughout summer and Christmas 2006. Vinopolis has already taken 7,000 Christmas bookings for this event. For more information please contact the events team on 020 7940 8322, email events@vinopolis.co.uk or visit www.vinopolis.co.uk/events


Notes to Editors
* RSVP Magazine (events industry publication) annual readers’ poll 2006.

The events spaces, including the vaulted Great Halls, custom built air-conditioned Mezzanine, European Wine Odyssey rooms, Academia and The Gallery can be configured for all sizes and types of event at a variety of rates. Vinopolis will manage the whole event, including food and beverages, AV presentations, lighting, entertainment, security, cloakroom and taxi marshalling.

Throughout Vinopolis, the accent is on the combination of fine wines and fine food. Its World Master chefs have created extensive menus for every occasion, be it Japanese sushi, Caribbean seafood, Creole stews, Spanish tapas, Swedish canapés, Korean bowl food or Thai soups, all reflecting the international flavour of the spaces within Vinopolis. The food is complemented by 200 fine wines from 20 countries, international beers and sprits and perfectly mixed cocktails.

The Vinopolis events team, ‘taste…VINOPOLIS’, has compiled a number of special packages to entertain groups of all sizes. These include The Original Wine Challenge, an evening spent discovering whether it is possible to discern grape variety, country of origin and vintage when drinking wine; The Whisky Experience, a three hour evening with a whisky expert learning about single malt, blend cast and bourbon whiskies; The Epicurean Challenge gives guests a chance to learn about the food that best complements wine from world’s greatest vineyards.

Vinopolis is now also one of the capital’s thriving hosts of marriage and civil partnership ceremonies and receptions, offering a variety of venues, for between 80 and 550 guests. As well as providing the venue, ‘taste…VINOPOLIS’ can manage and co-ordinate every aspect of any wedding, including room layout, lighting and decoration, tailor-made menus, wine lists and wedding cakes, flowers and photography, as well as in-house AV, entertainment, taxi-marshalling, security and nearby hotel accommodation.

By day, Vinopolis is both a visitor attraction celebrating the history of wine and a place to learn more about appreciating and enjoying wine produced today. Throughout Vinopolis, visitors are invited to taste wine from all over the world, including leading wine producing regions, like Italy, France, Australia and California, as well as wines from areas of lesser renown like India and Thailand.

Vinopolis sits beneath the arches of a Victorian railway viaduct built in 1866 by the South-eastern Railway Company to carry its extension from London Bridge over the Thames to Cannon Street. Wine and food have been important to the site for many years, with evidence of a Roman food and wine store being discovered in recent years and the Borough Market remaining open nearby for 250 years. Vinopolis sits on the site of the old Anchor Brewery, established in 1710 and the largest brewery in the world by the early 1800s.