The motto of The Vineyard is “We love wine. We eat, sleep and drink it” coincidently we do too so the Vineyard was the perfect fit for our February FAM trip.
The Vineyard is a 5 star luxury hotel in Berkshire – the journey from London Paddington takes less than 1 hour, and for our FAM, we were met at the station by our own personal driver, John, who was super friendly and provided us with lots of information on the hotel and the local area in the short 10 minute journey. Within 1 hour 20 minutes of leaving our desks we were standing in the stunning reception with a glass of wine in our hand which is ideal for Off sites and Away Days.
The hotel has 49 bedrooms, 32 of which are gorgeous suites. The group were all lucky enough to stay in the Atrium Suites which provide ample space for your delegates to comfortably work in the living room area of their suite without feeling like they are in their bedroom. The suites all have a lovely balcony providing views of the surrounding countryside and just feel so luxurious!
If your group were going to extend their stay or wanted to explore outside of the property, the local area provides an array of opportunities to add on elements to your event including golf, an experience at Bombay Sapphire Distillery, shopping experience at Bicester Village, horse racing at Newbury and for those Downton Abbey fans or international delegates looking for the typical English experience Highclere Castle is close by.
The hotel has 5 event spaces with the largest event suite having a capacity for up to 160 delegates. The event spaces all have that important natural daylight and what was very obvious from all our interactions with all members of staff, your delegates would receive impeccable service. The hotel is perfect for exclusive use providing your delegates with that “special” feel.
As you can see from our intro, the hotel is all about wine and for us, one of the highlights of the evening was having a private tour of one of the wine cellars. The hotel has over 30,000 bottles in their cellars with 3,000 bins which makes it quite the collection and so fascinating. The wine cellar would be a great addition to add onto your event with each tour accommodating up to 15 people.
After soaking up the atmosphere (and the smell of wine) in the wine cellar, we were more than ready to taste some! We were extremely lucky to join the wine experience that was taking place – a five course tasting menu with paired wines in one of the lovely event spaces The food was incredible, the service was impeccable and the wine was divine – we learnt a lot about wine and felt quite privileged to be able to taste a few that we would usually not be privy to. It really is a special experience.
With that lovely full feeling of an amazing evening of food and wine, we actually retired to our suites much earlier than usual and surprisingly woke up feeling very fresh faced the next day! So much so we enjoyed the day relaxing in the spa within the hotel before we begrudgingly got back on the train to London.
If your delegates love good food, good wine and impeccable service then the Vineyard is for you. For more information, reach out to Sarah Birch at the Vineyard who will be very happy to provide you with further information.