Tasting the wine in every stand at the Amex Stadium

At the January 2022 Brighton & Hove Albion Fans’ Forum, the most important question asked centred on a subject very close to the hearts and minds of the WeAreBrighton.com team – the wine at the Amex Stadium.

It was not so much a question as a complaint. Forget new strikers, safe standing or car parking; one supporter asked deputy chairman Paul Barber if anything could be done to improve the substandard white wine offering available in the West Stand Lower.

This chimed with two of the WAB team. Charles and Scott first tried the wine at the Amex during half time of the Charlton Athletic home game in December 2015.

Brighton were looking likely to surrender their 19 game unbeaten start to the campaign, having gone into the break 2-0 behind.

Following the consumption of a glass of wine each alongside the normal 15 minute pint, the Albion managed to turn things around and score three times in the second half on their way to a famous 3-2 victory.

Forget Chris Hughton’s team talk, the determination of the players to avoid defeat for the first time that season or a magnificent Albion goal from James Wilson, the reason for the comeback was clear – half time wine was lucky.

Naturally, we have been drinking wine at every game ever since. So, to hear the wine selection at the Amex Stadium take a bit of a kicking inspired us to branch out beyond our half time dalliance in the West Upper and see whether said supporter criticising the selection at the Fans’ Forum had a point.

We therefore decided to taste a glass of wine each in every concourse and Dick’s Bar at the Burnley home game. This totalled seven glasses of wine.

Given how absolutely shocking Brighton were in losing 3-0 to the Clarets, it proved to be a bloody good day to do it as the 90 minutes of garbage became rather hazy.

Here are the results we found from our Amex Stadium wine tasting experience.

Dick’s Bar
The afternoon began in Dick’s Bar. Charles was unavailable as his “train was delayed” but that could not prevent the start of the wine tasting process as Scott was joined by his French friend Daniel, who lived in Bordeaux for five years.

What Daniel doesn’t know about wine isn’t worth knowing and so he provided additional expert analysis for the first drop of the afternoon.

Things did not get off to a particularly good start with the revelation that no red wine was available. Instead, we were offered either rosé or white.

Even worse was to come when the wine was delivered in paper cups. As much as we all want to save the planet by reducing plastic use, serving wine in paper is a crime that should be considered serious enough as to be tried in the Hague.

Scott took on the rosé. The suspicion was it would have been pleasant enough in anything other than a paper cup. It was at least chilled and speaking from experience, that is something you rarely get in the West Stand.

Daniel meanwhile sampled the white. His verdict? “It tastes, ‘ow you English say, like… petrol.” Our gallic friend was not impressed, although little did he know at the time that his afternoon was going to get a lot worse having come all the way from France for a 3-0 defeat to Burnley.

The other issue with the serving in paper cups was that we never actually got to see what the wine was. It just arrived in a David Attenborough approved vessel with no indication as to brand or country of origin.

Poor selection, poor serving and no idea what the actual wine was represented a disappointing beginning to our Amex Stadium wine tasting session.

The cost of a glass of wine in Dick’s Bar was £5, or £1.80 more than a bag of Starburst.

West Stand Upper
Half time saw wine number two sampled in the West Stand Upper, a much needed distraction with Brighton already 2-0 down to a side who had not won away all season.

Red was available here, as sampled by Charles who had subsequently arrived looking slightly dishevelled. He revealed that the reason for this was that he had actually been on a brewery tour in Lewes that morning – interesting preparation for seven glasses of wine.

Scott took on the first white of the afternoon. Both wines were served via a small plastic bottle (sans lid) and a plastic glass, so initially things were looking up on Dick’s Bar.

The wine coming in a bottle meant we were able to identify the brand as A Day at the Vineyards. Wonder how long it took them to come up with that name?

Google told us that it is South African, meaning that the Albion have at least given one import from down there an opportunity to prove itself after the scandalous treatment of Percy Tau.

Charles was a fan of his red, describing the bouquet as fruity with hints of cherries and blackcurrant. He offered a score of 8/10 for it at the same time as giving a 0/10 for the efforts of Brighton on-the-pitch.

Scott found his white wine was more in keeping with the half time scoreline as it was served warm. No rightminded human would wish warm white wine on their worst enemy, especially when it cost £5 per glass (£1.80 more than a bag of Starburst).

If the temperature was the basis of the Fans’ Forum complaints regarding the white wine at the Amex Stadium, then the only conclusion we could draw at this stage was that they were well founded.

East Stand Upper
10 minutes before the full time whistle blew and with Brighton now 3-0 behind, we whizzed around to the East Upper to sample wine number three.

Scarred by the warm white in the West Upper, Scott abandoned white in favour of returning to rosé. Charles stuck with the red he had enjoyed at half time.

It must be said that the East Upper was a far more enjoyable wine tasting experience. Firstly, there were a stack of complimentary matchday programmes left on the concourse. At least we think they were complimentary matchday programmes…

Then came the wine. Again, it was from A Day at the Vineyards. The headline news here was that both bottles were served with lids.

This was a welcome shock as we all know the Albion’s stance on such matters being that a bottle with a lid is more dangerous than a nuclear weapon.

Scott’s rosé was chilled and Charles again enjoyed the refreshing aromas of his red. Whilst Brighton fans around us streamed out disgruntled with what had just happened on the pitch, we were enjoying our best moment of the afternoon.

The East Stand Upper did itself proud, with the cost of a glass of wine being £5. Or £1.80 more than a bag of Starburst.

South Stand (away section)
The unexpected bonus of deciding to carry out this Amex Stadium wine tasting session at the Burnley game is that the Clarets only brought 800 fans to Sussex with them.

This meant the South Stand was split in two, giving us a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the wine offered to home fans and away fans.

That was the plan anyway. Upon entering the visiting section and congratulating several stunned yet happy Burnley fans on their victory, we attempted to order a rosé wine and a white wine – only to be told that wine was not sold in the away end.

All sorts of questions entered the mind. Did the South Stand not sell wine as a general rule of thumb? Or was it standard practice for the Albion not to sell wine to any visiting fans?

Or was it because the Clarets were in town and there is a stereotype of Burnley as being Brexit-voting Boddingtons drinkers, who would rather ride a bicycle without the seat on than drink some foreign muck?

We headed to the section of the South Stand open to home supporters to try and shed some light on this mystery.

South Stand (home section)
Lo and behold, wine was available in the home part of the South Stand. This suggested that the lack of it in the Burnley section was therefore because of the presence of visiting supporters.

The next question had to be whether this was based purely on Burnley being in town, or whether more southernly teams like Chelsea and Watford would also be denied wine?

We decided that the only way to find out would be by repeating the experiment at the Norwich City home game. That and we were by now starting to get quite pissed as wine number four was sampled.

Both wines were again from A Day at the Vineyards and cost £5 per glass, or £1.80 more than a bag of Starburst. Charles stuck with red with Scott braving a return to white. That decision was vindicated as this time, the white was chilled to a nice temperature.

Neither came with a lid, better reflecting the Albion’s long-standing support of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons than had been the case in the East Upper. The lack of lid could be the only complaint though as this was another good experience.

East Stand Lower
Wine five saw us head back around to the East Stand, this time to the lower concourse. Charles had been hoping to pick up another complimentary programme here having managed to lose his in the space of the 15 minutes spent darting around the South Stand, but there were none on offer.

Clearly, it is just an East Upper thing. Or we had inadvertently walked off with somebody’s programme which they had left on the concourse bar. Apologies if this happened to be you.

The East Lower provided a similar experience to the South Stand. A Day at the Vineyards was on offer with Charles going red.

Scott had by now decided that white would be his tipple of choice having fully recovered from the psychological episode caused by the warmed wine in the West Upper.

Where the East Lower stood out was in its customer service. We were served by a friendly young women, who went above and beyond as she played along when Charles hilariously asked her if he could see the wine list.

“We have a wonderful selection for you today of red, white or rosé,” she said. The only thing missing from her performance was that she did not add, “costing £5 per glass… which is £1.80 more than a bag of Starbust.”

North Stand
The North Stand turned out to be a bit of a disaster when it came to wine number six, although it should be stated this was through no fault of the Albion’s.

There is probably a reason why no wine tasting expert in the world attempts to cleanse their palate after five glasses of red by wolfing down a steak and ale pie in two minutes.

Charles found this out the hard way when he had to dash off to the toilet a few sips into our North Stand wine experience.

Remaining steadfast in his dedication to the our Amex Stadium wine tasting mission, he still completed his red – although the taste was deemed to be not quite at the level of the East Upper. Funny that.

Scott’s white was lidless but chilled. Each glass of wine cost £5, or £1.80 more than a bag of Starburst. Both were again from A Day at the Vineyards.

West Stand Lower
The West Stand Lower had been chosen as the final stop on the Amex Stadium wine tasting tour because of the rumour that it sold prosecco.

What better way to wash down the previous six glasses than with some bubbles to toast three points for Brighton against the Premier League’s bottom club?

Only two problems with that. One was the final score. Two was that on arrival in the West Lower, there was no prosecco available.

This meant Charles finishing on a red and Scott sticking to the white. By now, the stadium was trying to shut down and that meant we found ourselves being hurried along by the stewards, who understandably wanted to close the concourses and go home.

Brighton and A Day at the Vineyards had done well out of WAB financially by this point. 14 glasses of wine between us meant a tidy sum of £70 being spent, for which we could alternatively have purchased 21 bags of £3.20 Starburst.

The final word went to Charles, who was asked as we staggered towards Falmer Station what he made of the overall standard of wine at the Amex Stadium.

After a pensive look and a lingering pause as he gathered his thoughts, he offered the following assessment:

“Is it the worst wine I have ever had? No. Is it the best wine I have ever had? No. Do I ever want to have a wine in every stand again? Definitely a no.”

The WAB Team filmed their wine tasting experience but unfortunately, the footage was so bad that Steven Spielberg was deemed the only man in the world who could edit it into something usable. Donations to hire Mr Spielberg for the job are now being taken, You can pledge yours to @wearebrighton on Twitter.