Benefits for Members

What your branch and members get from IWFS

These include:

Branch and member public liability insurance (including liquor liability) cover of GBP1.5 million.
Being a part of the oldest independent gastronomic society in the world (established 1933).
Enjoying camaraderie with like-minded people at events run by your own local branch to share wine and food.
Access to an international network of contacts from over 130 branches around the world providing the opportunity to attend functions or connect with like-minded people when overseas. All members receive a Branch Contact Directory, updated annually.
The opportunity to attend International and Regional festivals to explore new places and wine regions, and meet IWFS members worldwide. Recent festivals have been held in Taipei, Shanghai, Cape Town, Philippines, Kuala Lumpur, Vancouver, Tokyo, Kyoto, Melbourne, Mumbai, Delhi, Niagara, Baltic, Russia, Sonoma, Baltimore, Sydney, Perth, Margaret River, London etc. Coming up are festivals in Quebec, Napier, Auckland, Queenstown, Bordeaux, Lisbon, Douro etc. These festivals are great fun and enable you to personally meet members from all over the world.
A regular quarterly global newsletter (The Grapevine) plus a website http://www.iwfs.org/ to tell you what’s happening around the Society. It tells you about our recent festivals and all of the festivals coming up, has a list of all our branches around the world, and announces any new branch formed in the previous quarter.
A regular zone newsletter to provide more in depth information on what is happening within the Asia Pacific zone and its branches.
Monographs and articles on special interest wine and food topics for members (free of charge). For instance, Cork versus Screwcaps, Sonoma Wines and Olive Oil around the World. Coming up there are Monographs currently underway on English Sparkling Wine, the Use of Spices in cooking, and Madeira.
A handy, wallet size Vintage Chart, which doubles as a membership card, updated annually. This card, which has four double sided pages and is the same size when folded as a credit card, provides yearly ratings and ‘readiness to drink’ of all the major wine regions of the world going back to 1970. This has been prepared with the help of the IWFS Wine Committee, which includes wine specialists and several MWs from around the world. Many members find it extremely useful and simply carry it with their credit cards in their wallet.
Special accommodation rates for members when visiting London at the Naval and Military (In & Out) Club in St James and the Ritz and Mandarin Oriental in London, Les Crayères in Champagne, plus discounts on several Wine Newsletters such as Decanter and Champagne Warrior.

Your own website pages

Your branch can have its own pages on the IWFS website. We can set that up for you and you can be as involved in that process as you wish. We can set up the core pages (your Overview, Officers, Events and a ‘Contact Us’ facility), but you can add whatever other pages you wish – you will be given Administrator rights to do that, or else just ask us to do that for you You can also make pages private to your branch only, or available to anyone who views the website, or available only to your committee/administrators. It is very flexible.