I heart artisan&vine, Londoners heart draught beer

I heart artisan&vine. My passion for it is pretty much all consuming. I love the eclectic range of local and natural wines that we sell. I love the people that come in and share snippets of their life experiences. I love the pungent cheeses and white chocolate tarts; the ornate wooden back bar and contrasted black chandeliers. I love the mirrors, the lights and the front door that brings me new surprises every day.

Today my front door opened to the engineers who would finally install draught beer at artisan&vine. Since opening on 21 July I've learned A LOT. One of the most important lessons - if embarassingly obvious to everyone but me - is that Londonders love draught beer. And so here we are, almost four months into being open, artisan&vine are now proud to serve beer on tap.

We've kept in theme with the rest of the bar: the beer, Freedom, is made in England (Staffordshire), is organic and most importantly - is delicious! I can't wait to pull my first pint later tonight.

Today also marks my entry into the world of blogging. Genuinely looking forward to pulling a pint of beer is not the expected sentiment after 12 years of corporate life (I had the privelege of working at fantastic companies: BP, IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers & BHP). Yet here I am and I feel as ambitious and energetic as ever. In this blog I'm going to share my experiences of opening and running a wine bar, career change, and of course everything about tasting flavoursome and exotic wines.

For now though I need to log off. The bathrooms need cleaning before opening to customers tonight, and I couldn't feel readier!

Picture: artisan&vine exterior, 126 St John's Hill, Battersea, London, SW11 1SL