History
Vinopolis was developed by a wine merchant called Duncan Vaughan-Arbuckle. He chose a site beneath the arches of a Victorian railway viaduct, which was built in 1866 by the South-eastern Railway Company who wanted to carry an extension line from London Bridge Station over the Thames to the north bank.
Vinopolis opened on July 23, 1999. It started as a four hour long guided tour through static wine displays with tastings, but the business has evolved over the years and today it runs as both a wine tour and a corporate events venue. Within the complex is a retail spirits shop called the Whisky Exchange, which offers a range of several hundred bottles of whisky and other spirits for sale.
Vinopolis' newest visitor attraction is the Authentic Caribbean Rum Experience, which opened to the public in July 2008. Available as part of Vinopolis' Spirits package, the Rum Experience introduces visitors to the rum production process and allows them to sample a selection of Caribbean premium rums.
Read more about this topic: Vinopolis
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;and you have Pericles and Phidias,and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“If you look at history youll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 14661536)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)