Forget the orange slices — wine influencer Tom Gilbey instead opted to blind taste 25 wines while running the London Marathon on Sunday.
Over the 26.2 miles, Gilbey managed to guess seven wines entirely correctly — including their grape variety, region, and vintage — 14 wines mostly correctly, and only four wines incorrectly. This boozy run has since gone viral with over 2 million views on TikTok and 6.6 million views and counting on X.
A guy did the London Marathon and had a different wine at each mile! That’s something I can get onboard with pic.twitter.com/ml4dsEPY5W
— James Briggs (@jamescbriggs) April 22, 2024
The wine enthusiast, who has 92.5K followers on TikTok, pledged to taste one wine for each mile of the marathon in an effort to fundraise for the Sobell House, a hospice center that cared for his mother. So far, he’s raised over £10,000 for the charity, and the link to donate is still live.
Gilbey is known for posting educational yet entertaining wine videos, sharing food pairings, bottle suggestions, and yes, blind tasting tips. For weeks leading up to the marathon, he posted videos of his unconventional training routine, running through the park with several pit stops to taste wine. In one video, Gilbey even admitted his training had focused a lot more on the blind tasting practice than the actual running. But still, he managed to pull off impressive numbers on both fronts, raising the bar on what we expect to see from future marathon runners — Paris Olympians, take note.