Wine-drinking customers at two pubs have helped smash a world record held by the Spanish.

The budding sommeliers did their quaffing at a synchronised wine tasting at The Kings Tun in Clarence Street and The Cap in Hand in Hook Rise North, Surbiton, during the pubs’ recent wine festival.

The event was staged simultaneously at 680 other Wetherspoon pubs across the UK, with the aim of beating the existing record of 5,100 wine tasters set in Spain in 2006.

Guinness World Records have officially confirmed that the overall number of people who took part in the UK-wide wine tasting was 17,540, creating a new official Guinness World Record.

The Kings Tun pub manager Ian Taylorson said: “Customers joined in enthusiastically with the world record attempt and I am delighted that it has been broken.

“It is fantastic that The Kings Tun played its part so successfully in creating a new Guinness World Record.”