About Us
We love Somerset and we love wine
We offer a very personal service and we are 100% focussed on the quality of the wines we stock. We taste every bottle and select the best wines at the right price points we feel represent great value for you.
From a fabulous niche Burgundy producer to a delicious every day Rosso Piceno. We are excited by introducing you to new wines, unusual grape varieties or emerging wine regions to entice you to drink out of your usual comfort zone.
These days folk are drinking less, but better – as Von Goethe famously said, “Life’s too short to drink bad wine”. Cheers to that!
Who we are
Camilla Wood, know as Milly, established the Somerset Wine Company in 2015, seized by the idea of creating a welcoming and aesthetically pleasing space conducive not just to wine buying, but to wine tasting, wine education and crucially, connection with people via the beautiful subject of wine.
Milly’s earliest wine memories are of running through the neighbouring vineyards of her grandparents’ mill in Bergerac, France in the mid 1970s. She credits her grandfather, Air Commodore Harold Shephard, with introducing her to wine, not just fine French bottles but also great New World wines such as Penfolds Bin 389. Milly studied Art History and French at Bristol University and her early career was in the arts, initially in corporate development at The Royal Academy: the worlds of art and wine being closely related, both subjects where the senses and the intellect collide.
Bitten by the wine bug in the Noughties following many trips with her young family to the wine regions of Australia and New Zealand, Milly then embarked on the WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust) courses whilst living in Hong Kong in 2004, completing this 10 years later by achieving the Diploma, which gave her the impetus to launch the Somerset Wine Company. In 2011-2012 Milly restored an old ruined monastery in Le Marche, Italy which she now runs as a rental/retreat business. Consequently she has a passion for Italian wines, particularly those of Le Marche; Verdicchio being her favourite white wine.
Milly is a certified WSET educator, teaching courses in UK and Italy, a wine judge and a freelance wine writer, with published articles on the wine regions of Chianti, Madrid and Central Otago for The Wine Merchant magazine.
Emily
Having fallen into the world of wine at a relatively young age with a job as a Sommelier during my gap year, I carried on to study wine at Plumpton College gaining a BSc in Viticulture and Oenology.
Since graduating I have worked in supplying wine to supermarkets but predominantly and most recently, as a Regional Sales Manager supplying wines to the independent wine shops in the southwest.