There’s nothing we love more than meeting the Service95 community and creating space for people to connect. Last week, we did exactly that, taking over amie wine studio for our latest Book Tasting on a moody London afternoon.
This edition was a collaboration with our friends at the International Booker Prize, who – marking 10 years of the event on Friday 8 May – celebrates the finest works of fiction and short story collections translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland.
You might be wondering, how exactly can you taste a book (and should you)? Well, guests are invited to move through a selection of books the way they might a wine flight: sampling, noticing, comparing. Each title is paired with a wine chosen to echo something within it – a character, a tone, a place, a feeling – inviting you to read with your senses as much as your mind. The idea at the heart of it all: what happens when you pair a story with a taste? Can a wine mirror the feeling of a narrative, or bring its setting and subtleties into sharper focus?
For our event (which sold out in just four minutes), we filed into amie’s beautiful dining room to hear about four exceptional books, with both the Booker Prize and Service95 teams guiding us through the evening.
As the wines were poured, we moved through tasting notes and excerpts side by side, drawing links between flavour and feeling, setting and structure. The books – all stories that have travelled across languages and borders championed by the International Booker Prize – shared a preoccupation with memory, identity and the things we risk losing.
But what’s wine without the perfect partner? Luckily guests were treated to delicious pizza, courtesy of amie’s newly opened sister venue, Weezie’s.
Here are the wine and books paired on the night...
Not A River by Selva Almada – amie white
The men in Almada’s novel would likely drink rough, inexpensive wine that’s warmed by the sun – something harsh and unrefined. Pairing this story with a crisp, elegant white offers a quiet counterpoint: not the drink they have, but perhaps the one they need.
The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa – amie rosé
In a world where objects vanish from collective memory, roses are among the first to disappear – making amie rosé an especially resonant choice. Its delicate colour becomes a fleeting reminder of something already lost, mirroring the novel’s atmosphere of quiet erasure.
She Who Remains by Rene Karabash – amie red
Though the characters might more readily reach for raki or beer, the novel’s Albanian setting carries a deep, ancient winemaking heritage. Kallmet, a native grape from the mountainous north, shares earthy, robust qualities with carignan (the grape in amie red). The wine’s depth and colour also echo the novel’s undercurrents of violence and blood feuds.
Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq – amie non-alcoholic sparkling rosé
A luminous collection centred on Muslim women in southern India, many of whom live within cultural frameworks where alcohol is haram. A non-alcoholic sparkling rosé felt like a thoughtful, celebratory alternative.
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