Wine Society

The British wine society "International Exhibition Cooperative Wine Society" (IECWS) owes its existence to a large wine exhibition in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1874, to which numerous countries had delivered their wines. However, the visitors took little notice, so the Portuguese producers asked the British government for help. A series of luncheons was then organised to publicise the wines. The organisers were the founding fathers who established the Wine Society as a co-operative society in the same year. They were the taxman George E. Scrivenor, the ophthalmologist R. Brudenell Carter and the architect Henry Scott.

The main objective was set to buy wines directly from the producer to ensure authenticity and quality and to offer them to the members at fair prices. Norman MacLeod served as the first chairman. Incidentally, the longest term of office was held by the famous wine writer Edmund Penning-Rowsell (1913-2002) from 1964 to 1987. During his term of office, in 1965, a racking was moved from London to a specially constructed building in Stevenage. Around four million bottles of wine can be stored in the temperature-controlled halls there, some of which are delivered by the company's own fleet of delivery vans. The stock includes over 800 wines from all over the world.