Tom Gilbey, a wine expert, has raised over £14,000 for charity after he sampled 25 different wines during the London Marathon. He completed the race by blind tasting a different wine at every mile, naming each wine’s vintage, grape and producer. Gilbey, who ran his last marathon in 1996, had not trained with “fuel” except a 10km run with one wine tasting. He only drank small sips or sometimes did not swallow the wine at all to avoid feeling tipsy. He entered the race to raise funds for Sobell House Hospice Charity in Oxford.
Gilbey identified a 2018 Burgundy pinot noir at mile one, but he got four of the 25 wines wrong. He avoided feeling tipsy “If they were good, I might swallow it and if they were bad, they went on the road.” A video of him delivering tasting notes after each sample has gone viral on TikTok. Gilbey’s son, Freddie, organised the feat, and he also manages his father’s wine event experience business.
Chief executive of Sobell House, Amelia Foster, thanked Gilbey and the other marathon runners, who raised over £51,000 so far, saying that “hospices help people live life to the full while they can and to have as good a death as possible when the time comes”. Despite his achievement, Gilbey has no plans to participate in France’s Marathon du Medoc, an annual race held in September, which includes 23 wine tasting stops
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