Last week I paid a visit to The Sampler in Islington. They’ve got such a good concept going on…a wine shop with a selection of the wines that they sell open for you to taste. You may not think thats very out of the ordinary, bit at The Sampler they have magic dispensing machines, you pay money onto a special wine credit card and then hit the dispensers…you can choose between a 25ml or 50ml sample or a whole glass and as you would imagine these go up in price depending on quantity but also on the variety of wine. We tried some really good wines at very resonable prices but then got a bit carried away as we approached the ‘Wine Icons’ section. The prospect of tasting a £409 bottle of wine was just too much and we splashed out on a slurp of the Chateau Margaux, 1999. It still costs us £20 for the smallest sample but it just had to be done! I’ll definitely be back for some DIY wine tasting!