After about a year of selling wine and beer online around the country, one Redmond business is opening its doors to the local community for educational tasting sessions.

For about a month, LetsPour has been holding weekly wine tastings at 2887 152nd Ave. N.E. in Redmond’s Overlake Business Park. While LetsPour events introduce people to new wines like other tastings, they also provide information about the featured wines including winery history, winemakers, techniques and processes, regional background and more. Tastings are free and every Wednesday from 5-7 p.m.

Raghav Kher, founder and chief executive officer of LetsPour, said the tastings were started as a result of feedback from their online customers.

“Our customers have been asking for that,” he said.

Kher said LetsPour offers customers deals on wine and beer online and they ship to 36 states. They have about 100,000 users and in addition to purchasing products, they can also post ratings and reviews of their purchases and share their thoughts with the rest of the LetsPour community.

The company held its first tasting about three weeks ago and Laura Parkinson, who also works at LetsPour said they are slowly growing, with the first couple of events bringing in about 35-40 people.

Wine tasters can also purchase any of the wines they try at these tastings.

One taster who has done this is Tony Mandarano.

Mandarano’s business, PaidPunch, is also located in the Overlake Business Park and he heard about the LetsPour wine tasting events through an email that was sent to all of the tenants in the complex. He and a few coworkers decided to stop by and see what was happening.

“I went because I was new to the business park and thought it would be a good place to network,” Mandarano said. “The tasting was so great that we ended up buying a whole case of wine.

“He has been to two tastings and said they have taught him that there is so much to wine.”

Prior to attending I knew very little,” Mandarano said. “Steve (Body) is incredibly knowledgable.”

Body is LetsPour’s resident wine expert and shares everything he knows about wine at the weekly tastings.

Kher said LetsPour also offers information on which cheeses go well with which wines and which wines work well for big events and holidays.

Kher said they want to help expose people to new wines they haven’t tried before and LetsPour has a different theme for the weekly tastings. Previous themes have been based on the wines’ regions such as California, France and Argentina. Kher said for future tastings, they would like to feature Italian and Washington wines as well as special varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignons and merlots.

“There are so many great wineries out there,” Kher said. “Our job is to find these little gems.”