Review: Veeno Leeds – Wellington Place

Last week I attended an event at the new Veeno Leeds – Wellington Place, with approximately 50 other bloggers and their guests. The invite to the event included a +1 so I asked my housemate Jess to come along, as she loves coming to blogging events in Leeds with me and she likes her wine.

Veeno is a wine café which now has many branches across the UK. They now have two Leeds restaurants, so it’s a good job I’d double checked the email to have a look at the address and location. The Wellington Place Veeno has a very different feel to it, compared to other Veeno cafés I’ve visited. In early 2016, I went to the Veeno York bloggers event which you can read more about here.

The interior of Veeno Leeds – Wellington Place is beautiful. Each Veeno has a similar theme in that it always has twinkling white lights hanging in the window. With a wooden theme and bottle/cork decorations, the venue has a warm and friendly feel to it.

Upon arrival, we were taken to and seated in the Tasting Room. This was a private room which seats about 10 people. The particular wine tasting we got to sample was the Selezione Wine Tasting. The Selezione tasting experience brings you 2 white wines, 1 rosé wine, 2 red wines and 1 sweet dessert wine, along with matching appetiser platters.

The first white wine was my favourite out of the whole tasting experience, which was the Timpune Sicani Grillo, with the second white wine (Corte Ferro Sicani Zibibbo) coming close behind as a favourite. The buffalo cheese appetiser went perfectly with the white wine, I couldn’t stop eating it! To accompany the second white wine, we were given sheets of milk cheese and baked bread sticks, which went very well with this wine.

The third was Tasari Syrah which is the house rosé wine, accompanied by ham. We were a little eager with this one and had actually ate the majority of the ham before the wine samples had even arrived – oops! I didn’t sample the rosé myself as I’m intolerant to the grape it’s made from, so I was offered another glass of one of the whites which we’d previously tried – which was very kind.

The Sachia Sicani Perricone was the fourth wine of the evening, which was served with beef and warm slices of bread. I found this wine in particular to have a liquorice smell to it with spices.

The fifth wine was the Cutaja Le Selezione Nero d’avila Riserva, a rich red wine. This wine was served with gorgonzola cheese which was incredibly tasty and creamy. Even though I’m not a huge red wine drinker, I really liked this pairing.

Just as the wine tasting experience was coming to an end, Nino, the co-founder of Veeno came through to say hello and had a chat with us. He told us all about Veeno’s interesting history and how they had got to the point of opening Veeno Leeds – Wellington Place. Nino also mentioned Skinny Prosecco, which I had heard a lot about over the past 6 months or so via others on Twitter and in person. Nino kindly brought us a bottle of Skinny Prosecco through to try a glass of, which tasted so amazing. I’d definitely buy Skinny Prosecco myself if the opportunity arose.

To finish, we were given a final sample of Tagos Grillo (the dessert wine) to try which went perfectly with the delicious Tiramisu.

Thank you so much to Veeno Leeds for inviting me along and hosting such a wonderful evening. The wine tasting experience is such a great night out and I would love to go back and try one of the experiences with friends. The Selezione experience in particular costs £26.90 per person. Veeno is a fast growing brand and there’s currently 11 Veeno’s across the UK, so if you are near one I would highly recommend visiting and trying it out for yourself.