Residents of Barchester’s Edingley Lodge Care Home enjoy their tipples for National Beer Day and English Wine Week

You better beer-lieve that care home residents have been living it up over the past weeks, celebrating both National Beer Day and English Wine Week.

Residents at Edingley Lodge were more than happy to raise a glass, and sample some top craft ales, bitters and lagers, in celebration of National Beer Day.

The hospitality team at Edingley Lodge set up a bar for a real pub experience and brought in a range of brew-tiful British ales for residents to sample.

Residents and their visitors enjoyed a beer-tasting in the garden, virtual tour of a local brewery, learning about the history of beer they sampled the different craft ales, bitters and lagers.

Then followed English Wine Week.

It was certainly a week of fun-filled tastings for the staff and residents.

Whether you love a glass of fizz, a nice dry white, a delicate rosé, a juicy red or all of the above, English Wine Week is the perfect excuse to immerse yourself in the wonderful world of English wines.

To mark the occasion, residents had so much fun taking part in virtual vineyard tours, a wine-based quiz, a wine tasting masterclass led by a local wine merchant where they found out about all the different styles of English wines, a food and English wine pairing session, discovering how English wine-making first started and how much it has grown.

Also the hospitality team arranged a cheese and wine afternoon.

Jilu Stephen, general manager at Edingley Lodge said: “We have all learned so much this week about

English wines, how they are made, and all the different styles, we had no idea there were so many different types of grapes being grown in this country. Our residents really enjoyed their tasting session and had great fun pairing some of the different wines with foods.”

One of the residents at Edingley Lodge said: “I love a glass of wine, there really isn’t anything better.

“I really enjoyed trying some different styles, I had no idea just how many vineyards there are in England now. I especially liked the sparkling wines we tried, who doesn’t enjoy a glass of bubbles!”

Another resident said: “I didn’t realise we had so many lovely local ales, it was fantastic to be able to enjoy a cold beer in the garden with my friends and family – you can’t really beat that now can you?”

Jilu Stephen said: “We love socialising and celebrating all kind of events, it is wonderful to be able to invite family and friends into our garden to join in events again. National Beer Day is a day that the residents really enjoy, who doesn’t love a cold beer on a hot summer’s day.”