An Introduction - 'Myself and My Dreams'

By name, I am Tom Boxall. By occupation, I am a waiter. I started my career at The Chesil Rectory, Winchester, (www.chesilrectory.co.uk) and it was here where my aspirations begun. Beginning with the restaurant environment, my ambitions soon moved into the wine industry where I found a familiar uncertainty or lack of confidence amongst customers and the general public when approaching a wine list.

As a result, my dream became more focused on clearing the air between what the customers read on the wine list and what the customers actually want out of their drink. I feel with trends such as the 'ale revivals' and the 'local produce boom', now is the perfect time to re-establish our love and comfort with wine. 

My dream orientates itself around, what I like to call, a 'Wine Café'. I intend to run a wine shop - fine wines at good value prices - which doubles up as a casual, relaxed bar. I will also feature excellent, diverse spirits with the overall intentions to make drinking an experience as much as eating has once again become.

Further to this, I shall both lower the pretentiousness of wine; yet also educate those with interest in wine, origins, production and tasting by creating regular wine workshops. These workshops will be accompanied with platters of complementing flavours to the wine either produced by local caterers or chefs.

I plan on building strong connections and partnerships with local restaurant and hospitality businesses, enabling me to promote/sell wines on their menu or to set up joint events. The promotions would work both ways, in that I would sell their wines and they could incorporate a "can be bought at..." tag onto selected bottles.

This Café shall be called Fine Wine Café.

I have many more ideas to come, all involving a passion for wine and good food. But for now, this is my blog, for which I intend on reviewing wines, bringing awareness to events and to act as a platform for my future!

Fine Wine Ltd - Logo