Meet the inaugural AAVWS Fellow
My name is Sarah Limacher,
I have the pleasure of being Group Sommelier for The Keystone Group, which based in Sydney operates 26 venues across Australia, our portfolio includes our 3 iconic wine bars The Winery Surry Hills, Gazebo and Manly Wine, restaurants such as Rushcutters, The Chophouse, Jamie’s Italian and Kingsleys, our members club The Stables Sydney and award winning bars such as the Loft and The Rook.
Our venues are known for great wine lists, full of the fun, unusual and the eclectic; this reflects our attitude to drinking and also our venues personality. Introducing people to the new, exciting and different in a relaxed, fun and unpretentious way is my passion and what I enjoy most is having our guests get excited about trying something new and finding something different that they love! Currently at the Winery for example we offer 50 different wines by the glass with Australian examples of Fiano, Roussanne, Marsanne, Vermentino, Aglianico, Tannat, Primitivo and Saperavi just to name a few, all are available to taste for all guests even if it’s just out of curiosity, we also run wine tasting nights for our guests to showcase these great wines every Wednesday and very popular Wine night schools monthly throughout winter.
My other passion is the Australian Wine Industry; I am so excited about the wonderful realm of producers working with great alternative varieties. As well as my role at The Keystone Group I am also a national board member for Sommeliers Australia, a trainee wine judge and have got my hands dirty with 2 vintages under my belt in the Barossa. I feel I could gain so much from this experience, it’s a part of the industry I love and am excited to learn more about. I am a great communicator who presents with passion, confidence, zest and a good dose of humour, my role sees me speaking and delivering training programmes and public addresses very frequently and would love to pass on all I learn to as many people as possible.
Having such a diversity of venues and being a national group operator means I have plenty of opportunities to reach a wide range of people and demographics. We have a very large social media base, collaboratively across the venues we have over 100,000 facebook followers and very strong instagram and twitter followings. Within our group we also have a strong dedicated marketing and events team who I work closely alongside on many highly successful wine based events, dinners and collaborative events. Below are links to a few of our facebook and instagram accounts.
For our full list of our venues, pop on to our website http://thekeystonegroup.com.au/
The Keystone Group: facebook.com/TheKeystoneGroup & instagram.com/thekeystonegroup
The Winery Surry Hills: facebook.com/TheWinerySurryHills & instagram.com/thewinerysurryhills
Gazebo Wine Garden: facebook.com/GazeboSydney & instagram.com/gazebosydney
Manly Wine: facebook.com/ManlyWine & instagram.com/manlywine
Rushcutters: facebook.com/rushcutterssydney & instagram.com/rushcutters_
The Chophouse: facebook.com/Chophouse & instagram.com/chophouse.au
Look forward to meeting you all in Mildura this November. Thank you,
Sarah Limacher
#AAVWSFellow
Twitter: @sommyslimy
Instagram: sommyslimy