About Us
Wine brings people together and never gets boring . That's why we've decided to learn more about it - and to make wine events in London easier to find . At least that was the initial plan .
The Idea
Over the years, I went to a wide range of different wine tastings at various locations all across London .
I soon discovered that while London is an excellent place for wine tastings , finding interesting wine events and then not missing them by completely forgetting the date and time of the tastings was a real challenge. Not to mention the effort involved in shepherding friends to join me for the tastings.
One day, another nice tasting was approaching , and I once again was busy reaching out to friends to enjoy some new, exciting wines together . As I was walking home across beautiful Regent's Park , I suddenly had an idea :
I wanted to build something that would help me and my friends to taste wine and discover new regions, grapes and styles more regularly β UnscrewMe was born.
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Our Journey
When we launched our London wine events calendar in 2018, we made it much easier for everyone to find wine experiences everywhere in London. By September 2019, we listed 135 tastings per month from 42 different hosts at 61 different locations.
If you want to know more how it all started, you can read about "How to Find More Wines Worth Drinking", where we wrote about making our life easier and more interesting at the same time - by tasting more wine.
However, when the COVID-19 pandemic put a sudden end to in-person events, we decided to hit the pause button and focus on other things. Online wine tastings simply did not have the same appeal to us. It took us a while, to find the motivation to get going again. But now we're back.
Our current focus is more on content and less on a calendar app. But we'll still be bringing you news about wine events in London. Of course, we will also continue to explore more wine regions and grape varieties to broaden our horizon and make sure we can offer you great bespoke services to support you on your own wine journey.
If you want to learn mow about how we are building UnscrewMe, you can read about our business journey.
You can also follow our Medium publication.
International Coverage
And if you wonder whether our articles are worth a read, you might be interested to know that our journey has been covered in various international publications:
- An Agile Approach to Documentation and Structure has been featured on the official GitLab blog
- From Broad Strokes To Balanced Screens β Building the Front End has been included in the Official Vue News #90
- The Quest for a Desk: a Practical Guide to Co-working was featured on the Medium topic "Entrepreneurship"
Our Team
Goetz Buerkle, Founder of UnscrewMe.
To gain a deeper understanding of the wine trade and the hospitality industry, Goetz has completed the advanced level professional qualification WSET Level
3 Award in Wines and regularly visits a wide range of wine tastings, trade tastings and other
wine events to continuously expand his palate and his knowledge.
For many years, he used to manage the financials for a hospitality venture
that hosted countless live music gigs as well as regular wine tasting evenings
with a local winemaker.
From an early age, he helped during wine harvests in his uncle's
vineyards in the WΓΌrttemberg wine region in southern Germany. He continued
to join the hand-harvesting team when his cousin took over the business. Through
picking and sorting grapes in the vineyards, he developed
an appreciation of the skills, complexities and challenges of modern
wine-making.
When starting UnscrewMe, Goetz worked as Product Manager, Lead Developer and Technical Writer for a copywriting agency in London. Before that, he worked as Business Analyst and IT Consultant, for a startup and a medium-sized family business in Germany. He started his professional career when the internet was still new and exciting, doing freelance jobs as web application developer.
Goetz has a Masters equivalent degree in Information Engineering & Management, an interdisciplinary programme at the leading Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany and spent a year abroad in Stockholm at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, one of Sweden's top universities.