Six bottles, chosen for you. A sommelier on hand to open them with you. A booklet for each wine that tells you where it came from and why it tastes the way it does.
Start with the questionnaireA flight is six bottles that belong together — a grape across three countries, one village across four producers, one house across a decade. They arrive as a set, with a booklet for each wine, and a date for the session.
At the session the sommelier opens the bottles with you, in the order that makes sense, and you talk. About the wine, about what you liked and didn't, about what you'd like next. Nothing is scored. Nothing is homework.
Between flights you can message us about anything: a wine list in a restaurant, a bottle someone brought round, a case you're wondering about. That is part of it.
A short questionnaire — what you reach for, what you avoid, what you've been curious about. It takes ten minutes and produces a first sketch of your palate, which we send to you.
A conversation, in person or by video, to turn that sketch into a plan for the first two or three flights. No commitment yet.
Six bottles, six booklets, a session date. After that, the next flight is planned when you're ready for it — not on a calendar.
That covers the six bottles, delivery, the booklets, the session, and messages in between.
If a flight calls for something rarer — a grand cru, an old vintage, a prestige cuvée — we tell you what it adds before we order it, and you decide. Nothing is added to a flight without your say.
Flights are planned one at a time. There is no subscription and no notice period; when you'd like the next one, we plan it.
For clients outside the UK, flights are priced in US dollars and the session is by video. Ask us.
Each wine in a flight comes with its own booklet. Not a tasting card — a proper account of the wine: the place it grew, mapped from the official appellation boundaries; the weather of the year it was made; who made it and how; what it will do in the glass over an hour; what to serve it with, including vegetarian pairings as standard.
They are written for you, for that bottle, and they are yours to keep. Most clients read them at the table with the sommelier and again on their own.
Steffen Goelkel founded Barrelheads in London in 2013 as a fine wine and spirits merchant, and still runs it that way today. The Private Cellar began recently, as a programme for people who wanted to understand what they were drinking, and it has stayed small on purpose.
Every flight is chosen and led with a sommelier whose background is in London restaurants and the fine wine trade. We'll introduce you properly at your first session.
Ten minutes. We'll send you a first sketch of your palate, and take it from there.