“Wine tasting in London” covers three completely different things, and booking the wrong one is the most common way to waste an evening. There is the guided tasting, where somebody who knows what they are talking about takes you through six glasses. There is the self-pour machine, where you tap a card and help yourself. And there is a flight on a bar menu, which is just three small glasses arriving at your table.
All three are worth doing. They cost wildly different amounts and they are not substitutes. Here is what each actually involves.
What was rechecked on 28 September 2026
This page carries more than twenty prices across twelve operators, and they do not all publish equally.
Berry Bros. & Rudd publishes a full board of ticket prices and came back exact, from the £65 floor to the £395 ceiling. Elsewhere the check moved a handful of numbers: Hedonism’s sample machines now run every day, Diogenes the Dog’s tasting menu is £145, Denbies’ outdoor sparkling tour is £17.50, and Vagabond’s Soho bar pours more than 140 wines by the glass.
Davy’s publishes no prices at all on its tasting pages, so its figures are indicative rather than confirmed. Everything else below was read off the operators’ own pages, but ask when you book, because the wine trade moves its tasting prices every season.
Guided tastings: somebody teaches you
Davy’s, fifteen venues
The best value guided tasting in London. Their Wine School Tasting is £48 for two hours, an aperitif and six wines with a host. Old World versus New World runs the same price, Champagne and sparkling is £60, and a tasting with a three-course dinner is £85.
The venues are the interesting part: Champagne Charlies under the arches on Villiers Street, the Boot & Flogger in Southwark, El Vino on Fleet Street, the Mug House by London Bridge.
One caveat on those prices. Davy’s does not publish them on its own tasting pages, which carry the events and the venues but no figures, so the numbers above could not be reconfirmed on 28 September 2026. Treat them as indicative and ask when you enquire. Their private tastings are quoted on request rather than listed.
Berry Bros. & Rudd, St James’s
The serious, moneyed end, and the oldest wine merchant in Britain. Tutored tastings currently run from £65 to £395, with tickets listed at £65, £75, £85, £100, £135, £170, £195, £225, £295, £325 and £395. The floor has risen: this page previously said the range started at £50 and the cheapest on the board is now £65.
An Introduction to Wine Tasting is £135 for two hours and about ten wines, confirmed against a dated listing on their own page. Deep dives into Burgundy or Bordeaux run £170 to £325. Grand Crus of Burgundy and prestige cuvée Champagne top out at £395, which is still the ceiling.
Their one day wine schools run £325 to £365, from an introductory Saturday to Bordeaux and Spain, and they run WSET Level 2 as a three-day intensive at £765.
One correction worth having: their Sussex Cellar is not in Sussex. It is underneath No.3 St James’s Street, named after a Duke the Berry family called Uncle Sus. The shop itself moved to 63 Pall Mall in 2017, so No.3 is now head office and event cellars.
West London Wine School, Fulham
The most affordable structured teaching in the city, now part of the Local Wine School network and still at The Wine Cellars in Fulham. An evening Introduction to Wine Tasting is £35. Regional evenings run £40 to £55. A four-week course, Italy or a tour of France, is £165, and an eight-week World of Wine is £285.
No experience necessary, in their words. Book early: most listed sessions show as sold out.
Gordon’s Wine Bar, Embankment
The only place in London doing both formats properly. Their guided tastings run two and a half hours in the private tasting room at 6.30pm, one a month and sometimes two. The seven glasses of Italy evening was £85 and has been and gone, on 1 October. Next up, on their own calendar: South Africa with Neil Ellis Wines on 7 October, a cheese and wine masterclass on 15 October and Bordeaux on 4 November. The listing page carries no prices, so the figure only appears in their shop at the point of booking. Private guided tastings start at £1,100 for the room.
They also do unguided bar flights, which is the thing most people actually want: three whites for £15, three reds for £19, or a mixed flight at £26. A wine and cheese board for two, ten pours and five cheeses, is £79.
Diogenes the Dog, Walworth
Two corrections before you go. It is in Walworth, nearest Elephant & Castle, not Kennington as most listings say. And it is no longer a sherry bar: it now deals in wines from places that have no business making wine, including Texas, Poland and Taiwan.
A group tasting for six or more runs from £35 a head for five wines over ninety minutes to £65 for eight over two hours, with a sommelier. The full tasting menu, nine courses paired with natural wines, is £145. Their flagship eight-taster flight with small plates is £89, or £75 on a Tuesday or Wednesday or before 4pm any day, and their sommeliers guide you through it.
Self-pour: you help yourself
Useful to understand before you go, because nobody will teach you anything.
Hedonism Wines, Mayfair
Enomatic machines every day, 10am to 9pm Monday to Saturday and midday to 6pm on Sunday, with samples from £2 to £26.50 depending on what you are drinking, up to a 1989 Yquem at £450 a bottle. Phone first, because the machines get closed off for private events.
Hedonism also runs free drop-in tastings, 4.30pm to 7pm, through the autumn calendar. Their ticketed events are a different matter: the cheapest currently bookable is £100, and the interesting ones run to £285.
The Sampler, Islington
Top up a card at the till, insert it, choose your pour size. Eighty wines open daily, and gift cards from £10. Their ticketed tastings run once a month, on a Wednesday or a Sunday, at £30 to £95, but they publish no dates and point you at their Instagram, which is not a booking system.
Note the South Kensington branch has closed. Islington is the only shop now.
Vagabond
Self-pour by the wall, now owned by Majestic. Their Urban Winery tour and tasting is £29 for an hour and four wines, which is a genuine guided session, and they run WSET Level 1 from £250. The biggest branch, Carnaby on Ganton Street in Soho, pours more than 140 wines by the glass from its self-pour machines.
The serious end: WSET
The Wine & Spirit Education Trust is headquartered on Bermondsey Street, and anyone can enrol. Level 1 costs £250 in person or £210 online.
What you get: six hours of tuition, a workbook, nine wine samples and the exam, which is thirty multiple-choice questions in forty-five minutes at 70 per cent to pass. No entry requirements beyond being of legal drinking age.
Formats suit different lives: a single day nine to five, three weekday evenings, two consecutive Saturday mornings, or four weeks online. Level 2 is £630 and Level 3 is £995.
Worth knowing that other providers sell the same qualifications at different prices. Berry Bros charges £765 for Level 2 against WSET’s own £630; West London Wine School does Level 2 at £595 and Level 3 at £975, against £630 and £995.
WSET also runs one-off public tastings with no qualification attached, mostly around £40 to £95. Those sell out.
67 Pall Mall, and why you cannot go
It is the best wine club in the world and you will read about it constantly. You cannot buy a ticket to anything. Every event page routes to a members’ login.
Membership is £2,750 a year plus £2,000 to join, with an under-30 rate of £1,250 and no joining fee. Members may bring up to five guests in a day, guests must stay with the member who brought them, and nobody may be signed in more than five times a year.
We mention it only because the alternative is you spending an hour trying to book.
Vineyards you can reach from London
This is where most guides mislead badly, because they list vineyards without mentioning that you cannot get to them.
Denbies, Dorking: the only genuine car-free day trip
Direct from Waterloo in 50 minutes or Victoria in 60, then a fifteen-minute walk from Dorking station. No taxi, no shuttle, no car. That alone makes it the right answer for most people.
An outdoor vineyard tour with sparkling wine is £17.50, the vineyard train tour £13, an indoor tasting £16.95. The Secret Vineyard Tour is £35 for two hours, a cellar tasting with lunch £45, food and wine pairing £47. Open daily except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, and there is a hotel on the estate if you want to make a night of it.
Rathfinny, East Sussex
Berwick is an hour and fifteen from Victoria, but they state plainly that there is no shuttle and it is a ten-minute car transfer from the station. Plan for a taxi.
Worth the trouble in autumn: the Harvest Tour, Tasting and Dosage Trial is £40 and runs to 25 October. The Winter Tour is £34 from the end of October. There is a restaurant and a B&B on site.
Chapel Down, Kent
A twenty-minute taxi from Headcorn. They publish no rail time from London, so do not trust any guide that quotes one.
The walk-in wine flight is £15 for any three wines with no booking, which is the most casual option of any vineyard here. A guided tour and tasting is £30 for two hours and five wines.
Nyetimber: do not plan a visit
Their own FAQ says the estate is not open to the public. Open Days are occasional and discretionary, and the 2026 £50 tours are sold out with no further dates. Their dining events, £195 to £220, mostly show as sold out too.
London’s own wineries, which nobody covers
You can taste wine made inside the M25, and these are the most interesting hour you can spend on this list.
Blackbook Winery, in a railway arch off Broughton Street, five minutes from Queenstown Road. £25 for an hour and a quarter, tour and tutored tasting of four wines, most Saturday afternoons and the odd Thursday evening. It is unheated and you stand, so dress for it.
Renegade, Walthamstow, nearest Blackhorse Road. £25 for an hour and four wines, Saturdays at 2pm.
London Cru, next to West Brompton. £28 for the winery tour, or £170 for Winemaker For A Day, eleven till four.
Something different
Dans le Noir? in Clerkenwell runs a tasting in complete darkness, led by its sensory experts. £60 a head for an hour to an hour and a half, three wines and three cheeses, for groups of eight to sixteen, Monday to Thursday on request. It sounds like a gimmick and is not: removing sight genuinely changes what you notice.
Berry Bros run a blind tasting masterclass at £225, which is the technical version of the same idea.
Two traps
Terroirs on William IV Street has been closed since 2021. It is still recommended by guides constantly, its website is still live and the bookings button still works. The closure is confirmed on their own site, which says the doors at Terroirs Central have closed for good. Their sister sites, Terroirs in East Dulwich and Soif in Battersea, do still trade.
The London Wine Fair is trade only. It is not a consumer event and you will not get in. If you want a walk-around tasting, WineAlive, formerly Three Wine Men, runs consumer festivals at around £35, and Battersea Power Station has run a free to enter Wine Circuit with ticketed masterclasses, though none is listed this autumn.
Choosing
If you know nothing and want to learn: West London Wine School at £35, or Davy’s at £48.
If you want to learn properly: WSET Level 1 at £250. It is a real qualification and the exam is not difficult.
If you want a good evening rather than an education: a flight at Gordon’s for £15, in a candlelit cellar.
If money is not the constraint: Berry Bros, and pick the region you already love rather than one you do not know.
If you have a whole day: Denbies, because you can get there on a train.
If you have ninety minutes and want something unusual: Blackbook, in the arch, with a coat on.
Prices were rechecked on 28 September 2026 against each venue’s own published information, except Davy’s, which publishes none. Tasting programmes change seasonally and sell out, so confirm before travelling.
Where to go next
The best cocktail bars in London covers the other end of a drinking evening, and the bar guide has the rooms. If dinner matters more than the wine list, the best restaurants in London and the Michelin guide are the places to start.
For drinking rather than being taught, the best wine bars in London is the separate list. It covers the cellar that has been first come first served since 1890, the only one open until one in the morning, and the self pour rooms where a taster measure lets you work through six wines for the price of two rounds.
And our main London guide covers what to do with the rest of the day.
Questions we get asked
How much does wine tasting cost in London?
It ranges widely because the phrase covers three different things. A beginner’s evening at West London Wine School is £35, and Davy’s indicative price for its two hour Wine School Tasting is £48. Berry Bros’ tutored tastings run from £65 to £395, and a flight of three glasses at Gordon’s is £15, with no teaching at all.
What is the difference between wine tastings in London?
Wine tasting in London covers three completely different formats, and booking the wrong one is the most common way to waste an evening. There are informal group tastings with a host, structured tutored tastings, and tastings built around a full dinner. Read what is actually included before booking rather than choosing on price.
Is there a beginners wine tasting in London?
Yes. An Introduction to Wine Tasting runs £135 for two hours and about ten wines, which is the structured end of a beginner session. At the other extreme, deep dives into Burgundy or Bordeaux run £170 to £325 and assume you already know what you are doing. Start with the introduction rather than the region.
Written by Robert J Wills, no. 29 in the guide.
Last checked 28 September 2026 against the venues' own published information. Nobody pays to appear here and we take no bookings.
