Kathryn's artisan & vine blog

St John's Hill Festival - What a Day!

2010-09-17T16:13:00.004+01:00

What a cracking day we had last Sunday on St John’s Hill! The weather could not have been better and the neighbourhood spirit in full force reminded me a thousand times over how lucky we are to be a part of the St John’s Hill community.

The Mayor of Wandsworth, Councillor Piers McCausland (pictured above) said: “It is heartening to have this newborn event, pulsing with ‘can do’ and fun at such a strategic location within the local community.” Of course, Piers came by Artisan & Vine to say hello and congratulate us on Artisan & Vine’s recent International Wine Challenge (IWC) award.

Jane Ellison, MP for Battersea also came by Artisan & Vine with some friends to enjoy a bottle of Camel Valley Sparkling Brut, which of course was a massive hit! English sparkling wine continues to be the drink of choice on a sunny day on St John’s Hill!

Images: Top: artisan & vine on festival day, almost all of our seats and tables were outside! Middle: Wandsworth Mayor Piers McCausland (right) and I with the IWC Trophy.

We won the International Wine Challenge Small Independent Merchant of the Year Award!

2010-09-10T10:55:00.002+01:00

Last Tuesday Artisan & Vine won the International Wine Challenge (IWC) Award for Small Independent Merchant of the Year. The IWC is the world’s most prestigious and influential wine awards and winemakers and retailers celebrated alike as they received the industry’s highest accolades at the ceremony which took place at the Hilton, Park Lane in London.

Other award winners included Marks & Spencer for Supermarket of the Year, Sainbury's for Environmental Initiative of the Year, and Majestic Wine Warehouses for High Street Chain of the Year.

Artisan & Vine were also shortlisted for English Wine Specialist of the Year, which was won by Waitrose, and Innovator of the Year.

Click here to see the full list of Merchant Award Winners at the International Wine Challenge.

Image: me receiving the incredible trophy from Tim Atkin MW.

St John’s Hill Community Raffle

2010-09-03T15:52:00.003+01:00

Hurrah next Sunday, 12 September, is the St John’s Hill Street Festival! A brilliant day out with a surprising amount of things to do. At artisan & vine we’re setting up a whole wine making simulation, complete with the opportunity for you to foot press your own grapes :)

We’re also doing a St John’s Hill Community Raffle. The prize will be drawn on the festival day, 12 September at 4pm outside of the Beehive Pub. All of the businesses on the street will be selling raffle tickets from now up until the draw.

There are around 20 prizes, all donated from businesses on the street including: Helicopter ride around London for 4 people, multi course meals at various St John’s Hill restaurants, beauty treatments and vouchers, wine tasting sessions (at artisan & vine) and more! Tickets are only £1 each and all proceeds go to the St John’s Hill Community Project, aimed at maintaining and enhancing safety, aesthetics and spirit of St John’s Hill.

Click here for more information.

Now open for lunch, leaf teas and espresso coffees!

2010-08-27T15:21:00.002+01:00

I have loved sleeping in these last two years, don’t get me wrong. The thing is, since French Head Chef Jeremie took over our kitchen in March this year, I’ve been getting more and more requests for us to do a lunch as well as dinner service. So, roll on the day time opening…
As of next week, 31 August, we’ll be serving lunch, from £5, Tuesday – Sunday, 12noon – 3pm, at artisan & vine. Here’s what’s cooking:

£5 LUNCH
Mussels in a white wine sauceSalad Lyonnaise: poached egg, bacon, croutons
Omelette – with ham, cheese and/or mushroom with a side salad
Tomato, mozarella and pesto on toasted ciabatta with a side salad (V)
Goats cheese tart with French dressed salad (V)
Dolcelatté stuffed mushrooms with garlic mayonnaise (V)
Croque monsieur – cheddar, béchamel and ham with a side salad
Smooth chicken liver pate with toasted bread with a side salad Bruscetta with fresh tomato, basil with a side salad (V)
Plus daily specials

£7 LUNCH
10oz gourmet beef burger
Classic chicken Caesar salad
Salmon fishcake with poached egg, hollandaise sauce & side salad
Seasoned lamb kofta with tzatzki, pita bread and side salad
Vegetable pasta with creamy tomato sauce

Our full dinner, snacks and sweets menus will also be available during lunch time opening hours.

Our new lunch menu and day time opening hours bring with them the need for some exciting new non-alcoholic beverages at artisan & vine.

Firstly, we’re finally getting that espresso machine in. You’ll soon be able to drink fresh Illy cappuccinos, lattes and espressos in our comfy sofas with great music.

Secondly, having conducted some extensive taste testing we’ve selected some gorgeous, natural leaf teas that we’ll now be serving at artisan & vine. The black tea I’ve selected is from one of the last few tea gardens in Kenya to produce leaf teas (others supply teabags grades). Our chai whole leaf tea is infused with cinnamon, aniseed, ginger, black pepper, cloves, chicory roots, cardamom seeds and cardamom pods. We have whole leaf earl grey and peppermint, as well as a special balancing infusion made of cinnamon pieces, cardamom, liquorice roots, coriander, fennel, ginger roots, and rose petals. Your favourite leaf tea will be served with an individual filter (pictured), for you to control exactly how much infusion you’d like.Of course our new teas and coffees will be available whenever we’re open, so are also perfect for a relaxing evening out.

Screw vs Cork

2010-08-20T15:40:00.002+01:00

Frustratingly, I recently opened a bottle of Le Grand Prebois Blanc, and it was faulty. Instead of smelling like peaches, almonds and marzipan, it smelt much like dirty wet socks. The surprising thing about this was: Le Grand Prebois Blanc is sealed by a screw cap, shouldn’t it be more immune to bottle faults?

Wines stoppered under screw caps will not be “corked”, that musty effect that occurs when chlorine, mould and cork meet to ruin an otherwise lovely beverage. Screw caps have their own, if less common, flaws. Because screw caps offer a tighter closure than cork, there is a greater chance of a wine being “reduced”, ie, not having enough oxygen in the bottle. A reduced wine can smell of cabbage or rubber, not great for enjoying!

That said, there have been enough studies now that seem to point to screw caps as a superior preservative of wine, both over time and as a resistance to shorter term faults (see Jamie Goode’s Wine Anorak site for more). On account of the newness of screw caps, we don’t have anything other than laboratory simulation of very long term bottle ageing under caps, though premium wine producers like Bonny Doon in California are optimistic and pleased with early results.

The largest complaints against screw caps seem to be customer perception, followed by adherence to tradition. Personally, I’d rather increase the chances that my wine comes without stopper fault, and to that end my preference must be for screw caps. In the least case, it is worth noting that, increasingly, screw caps are not necessarily a sign of a lower quality wine.

St John's Hill Festival 2010

2010-08-13T11:19:00.001+01:00

After last year’s massively successful street festival, the community on St John’s Hill has got together to build an even bigger event this year. Even if you don’t live local, make the trip over to the Hill: it’s the closest thing you’ll get to a traditional village fair in London.

Here are a few of the things going on:
· Live music at the BeeHive pub and a Real Ale festival, which will be running in the pub throughout the weekend
· Children's pizza making classes at Tutti Tucci
· Wine making workshop at Artisan & Vine
· The Gold Fish Gala at the Fish Club
· Village Stocks at Potter Perrin
· Books and prints at Regent House Gallery
· BBQ at YumYum and ACE Fusion
· Instant, outdoor spray tans at Facial Attraction
· 'Guess the weight of the Cake' at Lollipop
· Launch of the "Blow Bar" at Alan Foster's hair salon
· The Human Fruit machine at Admiral Carpets
· Face painting at Doodlebug
· A troupe of stilt walking characters
· Huge selection of fresh food & drinks from cuisines around the world, provided by the delicious collection of eateries on the hill.

We also have St John's Hill Festival Raffle - the list of prizes is enormous and tickets are just £1 each - buy yours at any of the shops and businesses on the Hill, in the weeks running up to the festival and on the day itself. Full list of prizes will be published HERE and the draw will take place at 4pm on the festival day, outside the Beehive pub.

July’s 3 Most Interesting Wine Stories

2010-08-05T07:09:00.004+01:00

As August 2010 launches into our lives, I thought it worth a little look back at July 2010. Here are what I reckon are the 3 most interesting wine stories for last month:

1. A Spanish ice wine was given official Denominacions (DO) status for the first time ever. This is particularly scandalous because it is the first European ice wine to allow artificial freezing of grapes. The traditional ice wine regions – Germany, Austria and Canada – only allow natural freezing of grapes on the vines. As you may guess, artisan & vine will be boycotting artificied Spanish ice wine.

2. Automated wine dispensers launched in the US. Brilliant. A vending machine for wine in a supermarket. You need to insert an age ID card and pass the breathalyzer installed on the machine then push a button.

3. Momentum grows for “Vins de France”, an alternative to the arguably outdated French appellation controllee (AOC) system. Vins de France will allow wines to be blended across regions for “more consistent” flavours. The wines will be labelled by grape variety, to compete with New World wines. This is the opposite of creating wines with a sense of place; register Boycott #2 for artisan & vine this month.

Image: amidst news stories and innovations, wine at it's best continues to originate from simple, healthy grape vines.

Our 2 Year Birthday Party!

2010-07-23T15:18:00.002+01:00

Tonight is our big 2 Year Birthday party, to which all of our regulars and enthusiasts are invited!
Celebrations will start as soon as we open, at 6pm and continue on till late.

As a thank you for all of your support, we’ll be giving you 2 free glasses of wine on the night. Friends of artisan & vine need only show your membership card on the night. For all others on this mailing list, please print out the voucher attached here and bring it along to redeem your two free drinks on the night.

International Wine Challenge Merchant Awards

2010-07-15T12:50:00.002+01:00

This is really exciting. artisan & vine has been shortlisted for three incredible awards in the 2010 International Wine Challenge Merchant Awards. artisan & vine has been nominated for:

· Small Independent Merchant of the Year;
· Innovator of the Year; and,

· Specialist Merchant of the Year - English Wine,

I’m so stoked for us simply to be shortlisted for the awards. We find out winners in September. Thanks to all of you for your support and enthusiasm over the past 2 years that has made us the sort of place so many people enjoy great wine at.

Click here for more on the International Wine Challenge Merchant Awards.

Cocktails are here!

2010-07-13T09:25:00.004+01:00

I did a lot of soul searching about this. Should a specialist wine bar sell cocktails?

Do the cocktails interfere with the wine? No

Do the cocktails prevent people from experiencing our wines? No

Do I have any moral or philosophical objection to cocktails? Not at all!

Does having cocktails on our menu open up a whole new way for people to enjoy the atmosphere and ambience of artisan & vine? Yes

Well let's do it then!

We're starting small... to make certain we can get it right, I think there are few things worse than a badly made cocktail and few things better than a well made one!

Here's our list:

BY THE GLASS
Bloody Mary, Classic Champagne Cocktail, Cosmopolitan, Mojito, Pimms Cocktail

BY THE PITCHER

Long Island Iced Tea, Melon Ball, Pimms Cocktail, Pomegranate Margarita, Woo Woo

We look forward to seeing you for an ice cold refreshing cocktail at artisan & vine soon!

Chateau La Coste Rose 2008

2010-07-12T11:25:00.004+01:00

My choice of wine on my sunny day off yesterday? Bellugue, Coteaux d'aix en Provence
from Chateau La Coste. A pleasing blend of 55% Grenache, 25% Syrah and 20% Cabernet.

This is a gorgeous, delicate rose wine. Provence is famous for rose wines for a reason: this wine demonstrates exactly what that is. Forget ideas of sweetness or elementary flavours; this wine is as divine as any high end white – a triumph in natural wine making.

I first tasted Bellugue at Chateau La Coste, with wine maker Mattheiu Cosse. It's a fairy tale landscape, with the most modern and sophisticated winery I've ever seen on a natural vineyard.

You can buy it, with all of our other wines, on the artisan & vine online shop. This classic Provence rose sells on artisan & vine online for £17.90.

Image: me at Chateau La Coste, with my first wonderful encounter with Bellugue

Kaitlyn and the Magic Bottles (or, Why I opened London’s first natural wine bar and shop)

2010-07-10T11:55:00.009+01:00

[This story is a post I wrote for the 32 Natural Days of Wine series ]

Kaitlyn was lucky to live in a city where magic bottles were shipped in from places as far as Australia and as foreign as France. Although she was a curious girl, she'd left it until the very day on which this story begins to first taste wine. Kaitlyn knew from her dictionary that wine was “an alcoholic drink made from fermented grape juice”, which pleased her because it sounded like a healthy fruit-based way to consume alcohol.

Kaitlyn was curious but not rash and was nervous about spending too much money on something she might not like. So she bought three bottles of wine for £10 and went home. To her dismay the three bottles all tasted very much the same despite their different origins. “Why write the name of a place on a bottle if what is inside doesn’t give a sense of that place?” Kaitlyn wondered in frustration.

For thirty two times thirty two days following Kaitlyn drank only cocktails or alcho-pops – which also came in magic looking bottles – whenever she wanted a magic drink. At least these drinks described what flavours they were meant to have, rather than listing different countries or regions on a bottle while tasting very non-different inside.

One day more than that, Kaitlyn was walking down the street and up a hill when a terrible storm broke out. She ran for cover into what she quickly realised was another of these wine shops. “Oh drat and bother” she frowned.

The wall of the wine shop was lined with one hundred different bottles and on the counter sat two fishbowls. A silver herring swam around the fishbowl on the left and a red herring swam around the fishbowl on the right.

“But there’s no such thing as a red herring” Kaitlyn petitioned, wondering if the world of wine could seem any more implausible.
“There’s no such thing as talking herring either” the Silver Herring replied, “but here you have both”

The little wine shop Kaitlyn entered. Images of the herrings are absent because the talking herrings are not real.

“Would you like to try my wine?” cooed the Red Herring
“Or would you like to try my wine?” perked the Silver Herring
Kaitlyn yearned for a cocktail bar where good looking people rather than talking non-existent fish might serve her.
She looked at the bottles lined up behind the Silver Herring.
“Contadino?” questioned Kaitlyn, reading the label of an odd clear bottle with an even odder bright red liquid inside.
“It means ‘farmer’ in Italian” said the Silver Herring “It’s from a grape farm on the slopes of Mt Etna in Sicily”
Kaitlyn opened the bottle and took a drink of the Contadino.

Instantly Kaitlyn was transported to Mt Etna. She appeared to be in the grassy backyard of someone’s home. The sky was dark and the air had a slight chill to it. In front of her were nearly a dozen large plastic tubs with bright red grapes bobbing inside.

“Ciao!” beamed a bearded man with electric eyes, emerging from his home behind her “I’m Frank Cornelissen, welcome to my winery!”

I, Kathryn, stand in for Kaitlyn in photos with wine makers because she is not real. Here Frank Cornelissen shows me his fabulous grapes fermenting in giant plastic tubs.

“A winery?” questioned Kaitlyn, looking around the backyard.
“Yes! This is where we take those beautiful Mt Etna grapes and ferment them to create wine!” He scooped a wine glass into the vibrant plastic tub and handed it to Kaitlyn to taste, “Try some!”

Kaitlyn swished the wine around her mouth and tried to describe what she tasted, “intense red berry flavours, something minerally, like the wine was sprung from stone."
"Hardened magma to be precise" Frank smiled, “you taste that I’ve added nothing to the wine – this is 100% pure Mt Etna fruit”
It tasted delicious and not at all like those wines she’d had thirty two times thirty two days earlier.
Before she knew it, Kaitlyn had drunk all of the wine in her glass and was transported back to the wine shop.

Curiosity overcame confusion. She looked at the wines behind the Red Herring. Rather than describing a specific address or village, the Red Herring’s wines described large regions like ‘Central Valley’.

“Surely a wine made from a wider region must encompass even more flavours!” Kaitlyn remarked and eagerly took a drink from one of the Red Herring’s wines.

Again, she was instantly transported, this time, to what seemed like a factory. She gazed up at a massive steel tank that towered above her.

A winery I went to with tanks that dwarf people. This is not the worst thing that can happen to a person but dwarfing is not generally considered to be favourable.

"Where are we?" she asked the tidily dressed man standing beside her.
"In the winery" he replied, looking up from his clipboard.
Kaitlyn looked around her, seeking clues of where in the world she was. "Where are the grapes from?"
"All over” the winery man smiled proudly, "It doesn’t matter too much, we have the technology to acidify, de-acidify, chapetalise, micro-oxidise or extract as required."
Kaitlyn reflected on the dictionary definition of wine and her only other winery experience, “Don’t you only need to leave grapes bobbing in their juices to ferment and make wine?”
“Well you could – but that’s quite risky!” laughed the man, as if Kaitlyn had suggested something completely ludicrous, “Using modern technology we can produce consistent flavours, for a competitive price, on a mass-scale, year after year.”
Kaitlyn tasted the wine, “it tastes very woody”, she said hesitantly; confused about how something that comes from fruit, in a room full of steel, could taste like wood.
“Yes. For this wine we added tannin syrup and woodchips. This way we can make a very young wine taste like a great aged wine without the cost of oak aging or risky grape ripening.” The winery man explained enthusiastically.
Kaitlyn didn’t much like this additive-laden wine. She poured the drink out on to the sterile winery floor and was transported again back to the little wine shop.

She looked at the wines behind the Silver Herring and the Red Herring and blinked. There was nothing obvious to distinguish the two groups of wines.
“All wines are ‘made’, Kaitlyn. There is no wine plant, there are only grape vines.” Said the Silver Herring, “the difference is whether a wine tastes like it comes from somewhere or something.”
Kaitlyn felt betrayed and confused, “These manufactured wines seem to have more in common with my alcho-pops than fermented grape juice.”
“And they can be priced as good as alcho-pops too!” chirped the Red Herring
“I don’t know.” Kaitlyn said, remaining curious but not rash, “Let me try again”, Kaitlyn reached for another bottle behind the Silver Herring and took a sip.

Instantly she was transported to a beautiful sun kissed field. She could smell lavender and thyme and hear bees buzzing and birds singing. Ahead of her lay a vineyard, and beside it, a lovely two storey house, upon the balcony of which stood a man, singing out to his vines:
“I love you! I love you all!” he was saying to his vines. Kaitlyn walked to below the balcony.
“Bonjour!” the man gave a lively smile, “I’m Henri Milan, welcome to my beautiful vineyards of St Remy de Provence!”
Henri came downstairs and took her out amongst the vines. There were a wide range of colourful plants and insects living in the vineyard.

I stand in for Kaitlyn again, with Henri Milan, showing me is fantastically healthy biodynamic vineyard in Provence.

“The vines cannot live alone. They are part of an ecosystem, with lots of other plants and animals, they keep each other strong.” explained Henri “The flavour in the wines comes from the life in the vineyard and the soils. Because everything in the vineyard is natural, I make minimal intervention in the winery. What you taste is 100% Provencal fruit!”
Kaitlyn drank some more of Henri’s wine; “it tastes like lavender and thyme” she smiled contently.
“Of course – you are in Provence! These flavours are everywhere!” Henri exclaimed.
All too quickly Kaitlyn again had drunk all of the wine in her glass and was transported back to the little wine shop.

“It’s true! These magic bottles do have the potential to give a sense of the place that they’re from. But how do I find the magic wines from amongst these manufactured wines?” Kaitlyn questioned.

“The great dilemma of today’s wine world is not that there are so many ways of getting from fruit to wine but that the consumer has no reliable means of knowing which way a given wine maker has chosen” said the Silver Herring wisely.

Kaitlyn felt frustrated that all of the bottles in front of her were denying her the ability to make an informed choice about what she tasted and consumed. She turned scornfully to the Red Herring, “I do believe that your wines are as produced and preserved as an actual red herring and as distracting from the truth as the ideological red herring!”

She turned to the Silver Herring “The wines you’ve shown me…”
“We call them ‘natural wines’” interjected the Silver Herring helpfully.
“These natural wines are so very different to one another and so very like where they’re from. I do believe that each time I drink them I’m transported to where their grapes are grown.”

Kaitlyn felt resolve growing, “I may not have the ability to instantly change all bottle labelling to be more transparent, but I could help people find a lovely wine shop like this where there is transparency about what is being sold.”

The Silver Herring smiled, “There are no natural wine shops in our lucky city, but it needs only a beast with arms greater than a fish’s to open our first natural wine bar and shop.”

Kaitlyn looked down at her arms. They were a little lanky, but certainly capable of opening a shop “I could do it!” declared Kaitlyn excitedly, “But how will we let people to know that natural wine even exists as a choice?”

“32 days is a good start…”

Natural wine definition

2010-07-08T12:26:00.007+01:00

It’s occurred to me today that this is probably the only Natural wine blog site without a natural wine definition. This is partly because I find definitional debates, in general, too often rooted in pedantics and anecdotes when life seems to me to exist more organically in the realm of principle.

That said, as the home of London (indeed the UK's) first natural wine bar and shop, I feel obliged to define what exactly that means, at least my interpretation of it, which we are entirely transparent about thoughout our wine list and website.

At artisan & vine, all of our wines are either local (English) wines or natural (only the Davenport wines are both). “Natural wines” are not yet legally defined within the EU.

HERE'S MY SINGLE SENTENCE TAKE ON THE NATURAL WINE DEFINITION:

At artisan & vine, a natural wine is one made in a biodynamically or organically farmed vineyard, with indigenous (wild) yeasts, and minimal or no added sulphites or flavour enhancers.

The principle is to make wines that demonstrate a clear Sense of Place. They taste like they come from somewhere rather than something.

Why are organic wines not enough? Organic wines are not what they seem. Within the EU, a certified “organic wine” only guarantees you organically grown grapes; the winemaker may add flavours (such as wood chips or caramel), stabilisers (such as sulphur dioxide), and preservatives during the wine making production. This is how mass produced cheaper wines can be created.

Natural wines are wines created with minimal intervention from the wine maker. Natural wine making requires the artisan to carefully attend to all steps of the growing, fermenting, and blending processes, knowing that additives cannot be used to correct the imperfections of nature. As Tim Atkin MW concluded in his May 2010 article in The Times, “Natural wines are the opposite of mass-produced wines, of “spoofulated”, personality-free beverages that could come from almost anywhere. These are hand-crafted products”. Often this makes natural wines commercially unviable on a mass, low cost scale. Vintages can vary significantly from year to year based on climate conditions, and personal attention means very low yielding vineyards. I reckon you’ll taste this difference.

Image: Pierre Breton's fantastically healthy natural vineyards in Bourgueil, Loire Valley.

July events at artisan & vine

2010-07-07T10:21:00.001+01:00

Cool! A new month of activity – I love the Summer season! Here’s what’s happening, click here for more information on any of these great events:

Thur 8 - Speed Dating, usually 12-18 dates per person, £14.95/person

Sun 11 - Speed Dating, a Sunday session for busy professionals, £10/person

Wed 14 - Wine Tasting: Introduction to Southwest France, £20/person includes 5 wines and matched canapés

Sun 18 - Speed Dating, meet someone or come again free, £10/person

Wed 21 - Wine Tasting: How to taste wine, £10/person includes 5 wines +canapes

Thur 22 - Speed Dating, 4 minutes per date, meet lots of people, £14.95/person

Sat 24 - 1 Day Wine Workshop, Wine Unearthed Introduction to World of Wine

Sun 25 - Speed Dating, meet someone or come again free, £10/person

Wed 28 - Wine Tasting: Where wine flavour comes from, £10/person

Click here for more information on any of these great events.

Burgundy: an Introduction

2010-07-05T13:04:00.003+01:00

I didn’t get Pinot Noir until I went to Burgundy. Now I find I can’t drink Pinot Noir from anywhere else. Burgundy is like that. Entirely captivating.

If you’re drink red wine from Burgundy, you’re probably drinking 100% Pinot Noir. If you’re drinking white wine from Burgundy, you’re most likely drinking 100% Chardonnay. If at some point in your life you’d decided to become an “ABC” drinker (Anything But Chardonnay), please consider reversing the decision, you may have made a mistake. Burgundian Chardonnay is one of the best things that any wine glass will ever have the honour of carrying.

So, now I’ve made my absolute lack of bias clear… clearly absent… let’s talk names and geography.

The Cote d’Or is the North-South stretch of land where the most important Burgundian vineyards are located. It is divided in two: the Cote de Beaune, which roughly stretches from Beaune south to Chagny and the Cote de Nuits, which stretches from Beaune north to Dijon. The other important Burgundy regions are Chablis, producing fresh Chardonnay way up north; Maconnais, producing more buttery Chardonnay down south; and Beaujolais, producing fresh Gamay wines even further south than Maconnais, near Lyon.

Burgundy is a star studded line up of regions and wines. Despite that, it maintains a much more rustic, homely feel than other similarly famous regions such as Bordeaux or Champagne. Off the back of my love for Burgundy, we’re getting some exciting new Burgundian wines in with our 2010-11 wine list. Get ready to fall in love.

Image: in the cellars of Domaine D'Arlot

Eat Out Manifesto continues on

2010-07-02T12:02:00.004+01:00

The Eat Out Manifesto we started as a part of election fever back in April continues on. We like to keep our election promises :)

To recap:

1. We believe that all Londoners should be able to eat out any day of the week, regardless of occasion or cause for celebration.

2. We believe that Monday through Thursday should provide the same, if not better, opportunities for eating out as over-crowded week ends.

3. We believe that outstanding wine should be available with every eating experience, and enjoyed without compromise.

To fulfil these ideologies, we pledge to offer all customers the opportunity to enjoy a Prix Fixe menu of £11 for two courses or £13 for three courses, any day of the week.

Click here to see menus on offer as a part of the Eat Out Manifesto.

Visit to Bourgueil, Loire Valley

2010-07-01T12:27:00.003+01:00

Andy & I visited a number of vineyards during our recent trip to the Loire Valley. Two that really stood out are those of Sebastien Riffault in Sancerre, which I wrote about a few days back, and that of Catherine and Pierre Breton, in Bourgueil.

Visiting Pierre is a pretty cool experience. His vineyards are scattered around his very French country house. The tasting cellar, where a number of barrels are kept, is below his house, and this is where we commenced our experience.

The day's tasting would be dominated by his range of electrifying Cabernet Franc wines. The grape variety is often accused of being harsh or bitter. At Domaine Breton it is only bright red berry fruits, striking minerality and rounded plum tones to finish. We loved every wine and were particularly impressed by how elegantly some of the wines had aged.

After the tasting we took a short drive to what is probably the coolest natural underground cellar I've ever been in. A limestone cave to rival those of Aladin. It was all as fairy tale as the idea of an elegant Cabernet Franc!

We're stocking a few of my favourite of Pierre's wines at artisan & vine. Come by for a taste of fantasy!

Image: Pierre and I at the entrance to his most awesome natural limestone cave.

Wine serving temperatures

2010-06-29T12:41:00.002+01:00

The final onset of Summer seems to me a very good time to talk about the temperature at which wines should be served.

Let’s start with talking about why it makes a difference to serve wine at the right temperature and why the right temperature is different for different wines.

1. Our sense of smell operates on the perception of vapours. Red wines generally have a higher molecular weight than white wines, and so they need warmer temperatures for their aromatic vapours to be released. In general, the darker the colour of a wine, the heavier its weight, and the warmer it should be served.

2. Our perception of tannins are effected by temperature too. In general, the colder a wine is served, the more its tannins will be exposed; the warmer a wine is served, the softer its tannins may be perceived. For mature, soft tannins like those present in a Burgundian Pinot Noir, serving wine a little colder will show off the fabulously refined tannins better than ‘smoothing them over’ with warm serving temperature.

3. Sweeter wines are generally served better cold. The coldness emphasises the acidity, which is needed to balance the sweetness in the wine for freshness rather than syrupy-ness.

So what is the summation?

Sweet wines should be served between 4 and 7 degrees Celsius. Dry whites between 6 and 11. Very fine white wines (best Burgundy, German, Australian and Californian whites) between 10 an 12 degrees Celsius. Light reds should be served between 10 and 14 degrees. Heavier reds should be served between 14 and 18 degrees.

Now, if you get an ice bucket with your red wine this summer: you’ll know why!

Image: glasses lined up and ready to be drunk at artisan & vine

Visit to Sancerre

2010-06-25T11:23:00.003+01:00

Last week Andy and I had the lovely privelege of some days in the Loire Valley.

We started in Tours, and went to a fabulous little wine bar to "orientate" ourselves with the local wine scene.

Day 2 was a trip out to Sancerre to visit the fabulous Sebastien Riffault. His Sancerre wines are out of this world - full of fruits and minerals - DESPITE being 100% Sauvignon Blanc.

Sebastien doesn't add an sulphites at all to his wines (since 2007), using the natural acidity and health of his grapes to preserve his wines. Horses rather than tractors are used in the vineyards, for the most part, and it was clear the soil was grateful for this.

In addition to rows of lovely weed-infested vineyards, Sebastien also grows his own biodynamic vegetables, which we took part in harvesting, before a wonderful sunshine BBQ.

We stock my favourite of Sebastien's wines, Sancerre Akmenine, at artisan & vine. Not your average Sancerre and a great example of how different natural wines can be from the norm.

Image: Andy (left) and Sebastien check out the beautiful vineyards on the rolling hills of Sancerre.

A new favourite? Dog Point Sauvignon Blanc

2010-06-23T13:02:00.002+01:00

1 June 2010 saw the introduction of the new 2010-11 artisan & vine wine list. It heralded a lot of new exciting wines. It's fabulous to see how people are reacting to the new wines, and I reckon we already are starting to see a new favourite amongst our regulars.

Is it a big surprise that it's a Marlborough Sauvignon? Perhaps not. Though this wine is surprisingly good. We're selling it at only £12.90 take home, which makes it absolutely worth a try!

Click here to buy some online for home now!

A visit to Davenport Vineyards, Kent

2010-06-22T10:18:00.001+01:00

All of the wines at artisan & vine are either Local (English) or Natural. A natural wine is one that not only uses organic or biodynamic practices in the vineyard, but also uses minimal intervention in the winery. Most English vineyards are very low intervention but they are rarely organic and rarely ferment using wild yeasts indigenous to the grapes harvested. It’s a relatively minor point of distinction but it has factions of the wine world hot in debate. For me, the most important element is transparency: as consumers we should know what exactly is in our bottle of wine. Sadly, obtuse bottle labeling means that often we don’t.

Of the 100 wines on the artisan & vine wine list only one is both Local and Natural. This is the Limney Sparkling wine from Will Davenport. Ideally I would have two wines on the list but as usual, Mr Davenport is completely sold out of his outstanding still white wine… back in stock and on our lists in a few weeks (I hope!) His wines are in such hot demand that when the artisan & vine team and I went to visit his gorgeous vineyards in Kent last week, we had to help label bottles ourselves just to get them on the shelves!

Will makes two sparkling wines, a white and a red. He has two vineyard sites over Kent and Sussex. The wine is delicious – absolutely worth coming by for a try! The still white wine in particular is extremely exciting for the overtly local AND natural qualities it displays.

Image: courageous English wine maker Will Davenport risked organic farming in wet England and has succeeded. Here he shows our Karlee how to pack wines for us to take home and put on the shelf!

How to (finally!) taste wine

2010-06-21T12:22:00.003+01:00

This is Part Three of a Three Part series on how to taste wine. There are three elements to tasting wine: seeing, smelling and tasting. Counterintuitive but true. Today I’m finally going to address what happens when wine is in your mouth.

Take a swig and swish.

Five main things we’re looking for:

1. Tannins. Tannins come from the grape skins or barrels that wines are fermented or aged in. You can assess how tannic a wine is by how it dries your mouth. Think of that sensation you get when you leave your tea bag in tea for too long – that is too much tannin.

2. Acidity. Acidity sounds bad. Interpret it as “freshness”. You can assess the acidity in a wine by how your mouth waters. Now you start to build a picture: a balanced wine is one where the refreshing acidity of the wine balances the drying tannins in a wine.

3. Alcohol. In a good wine, you shouldn’t taste or smell alcohol. The flavour and aroma molecules in the wine should be more prevalent than the alcohol molecules. A wine that is too alcoholic can be detected by that burning feeling at the entrance to your throat.

4. Sweetness & bitterness both take a little more practice to detect. Your best guide is that if you feel you detect too much of either: it’s probably not a great wine.

5. Length. Length is one of the most reliable indicators of a quality wine. How long does the taste of the wine stay in your mouth? The longer the better.

Image: this time last year I was tasting wine with Alain Chabanon at his domaine in Languedoc. We’re stocking his rose this Spring – it’s a real winner!

How to taste (smell) wine

2010-06-18T09:45:00.003+01:00

This is Part Two of a Three Part series on how to taste wine. There are three elements to tasting wine: seeing, smelling and tasting. Counterintuitive but true. Today I'm addressing how to assess a wine’s nose (how it smells).

You’ve probably already consumed whatever wine you were working with yesterday, so, we start again: First, pour a small amount of wine into the glass – around 50 – 75mls, or a quarter full. This is not pretentious custom. We need room in the glass for swivelling (aeration), and also so that we can keep precious aroma molecules in the glass.

Before we swivel, take a sniff of the wine fresh poured. Older wines are unlikely to give off too much aroma without agitation. Ironically, more mass produced wines are likely to give an intense aroma from the outset. After your first sniff, swivel the glass. The aim is to let air into the wine and aromas out. Swivel for a few seconds and take another sniff. The character of the wine should now start to show itself.

The aroma of a wine is a strong indicator of the flavour to follow. Becoming familiar with the aromas and flavours you enjoy most, and being able to describe them, will help you select more wines you enjoy in future. Do you smell more fruit or more oak? Is the smell apparent with one sniff or do you need to concentrate to pick up aromas? Neither end of these spectrums is necessarily a sign of quality: you’re trying to get in tune with your preferences.

Here is a sign of quality we get from aroma: how does the aroma change as you work your way through a bottle? Excellent wines will evolve once opened and often the aroma becomes stronger or more interesting with time. Un-excellent wines (a technical term :) ) will loose flashy fragrances after opening. It’s an indicator of how well integrated flavour and aroma molecules are.

Image: large oak barrels, like the ones I’m shown at Comte Lafon in Burgundy, enrich the fruit aromas within the chardonnay; there is no need to mask inferior fruit with distracting oak

Randall Grahm quotes from his visit to artisan & vine

2010-06-17T14:25:00.008+01:00

On Monday 7 June, we had a wine superstar at artisan & vine, Randall Grahm, owner and wine maker of Bonny Doon Vineyards in California.

I've been asked several times now for my write up of events... as it is nearly two weeks ago now. Here's the problem... I was so busy talking and tasting - as usual - that my notes are well... non-existent. My memories are great, but not necessarily great reading.

Time to rely on a more reliable source. Luckily for me, a more avid note taker, Jamie Goode, was on hand for the evening taking fantastic notes.

The following quotes from Randall are from Jamie's brilliant wine blog:

"On Cigare Volant, his flagship wine: ‘I started out trying to make Châteauneuf du Pape. I don’t even like Châteauneuf du Pape, but I do like Burgundy.’

On reduction: ‘One way I think of reduction in wine is like horniness in guys. It can be a little off-putting at times but it is a sign that they system is working the way it should.’

On cool climate viticulture: ‘A cool climate for me is also an appropriate climate. The grapes come in balanced. You don’t need to acidulate or dealcoholize the wine. If you have to manipulate the wine, this suggests that you are not growing the grape in the right places.’
‘Not all vineyard sites are created equal. Not all vineyard sites are good for grapes!’

On terroir: ‘The notion of terroir is the most beautiful idea in wine lore. A true vin de terroir needs a good rooting system. Terroir is a radio signal, and it is a question of the signal to noise ratio. We want to amplify the signal without distorting it. For example, if you restrict yields in a deeply rooted vineyard, you amplify the signal. Drip irrigation dilutes the signal. The ratio of roots to fruit is probably the single greatest determinant of wine quality.’

On the California wine industry: ‘The wine industry is a sort of disaster now – a victim of its success. When I got started, people did it because they loved it. It’s now a business, and too much money is invested in it. It has given the business a loss of self confidence. Everyone needs a consultant, and even the consultants need consultants. The era of cooperation and goodwill has largely gone.’"

Image: Randall Grahm at artisan & vine. I don't know why this image refuses to sit straight...

How to taste (see) wine

2010-06-17T11:23:00.003+01:00

Given that I just spent the best part of the last week tasting tasting tasting in the Loire Valley (stories from that to follow!)… I thought it was a good topic to get into for this week’s Wine Facts. (less a fact than a tip but I know you’ll grant me that leeway).

There are three elements to tasting wine: seeing, smelling and tasting. Counterintuitive but true. Today I’m going to address assessing a wine’s appearance; we’ll cover nose and palate over the next days blog entries.

Firstly, pour a small amount of wine into the glass – around 50 – 75mls, or a quarter full. This is not pretentious custom. We need room in the glass for swivelling (aeration), and also so that we can keep precious aroma molecules in the glass.

Under normal circumstances, you will know the grape, region and vintage of the wine you’re drinking. That all the case, there are wines who lose their fruit quickly (age fast) or show characteristics atypical of their region or grape. We can judge some of these elements by sight.

Look at the colour of your wine: white wine becomes deeper with age; red wine becomes paler. All wines become browner with age. When you tilt your wine glass at an angle, older reds will be almost completely transparent at the rim: it’s not a lack of quality… it’s just age J Depth of colour – in red or white wine – will indicate how thick the skins of the grapes were and/or how long the grape juices were left in contact with their skins during maceration.

When your glass is tilted to the side: wines with a single, consistent colour gradient, are general “drink now” wines that are unlikely to evolve. Wines with a glossy appearance and subtle gradations in the wine colour are superstars – you must be drinking an artisan & vine wine J

Image: last July I tasted Catherine Massioneuve’s outstanding Cahor Malbecs across vintages and cuvees. The rich berry darkness of the wines a certain indicator of the rich flavours and aging potential.

My pièce de résistance: the new artisan & vine wine list

2010-06-11T12:50:00.002+01:00

The last few months I’ve been tasting and talking and tasting some more. Here are the results, my pièce de résistance: the 2010-11 artisan & vine wine list.

What’s new?
· More Italian wines including Barolo, Chianti, Brunello and Barbaresco
· Some classic premium New World wines including New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Australian Shiraz and Californian Cabernet Sauvignon
· Twelve English vineyards and twenty English wines
· Ten wines under £20
· Maps, icons and explanations of key world wine regions
· A printed off-licence price list, available whenever we’re open

Check it out the new wine list online here. We have a new range of exciting wines on by the glass also, so get tasting now!

Image: the artisan & vine wine list, so so exciting inside!

Sunday Speed Dating at a&v

2010-06-06T15:28:00.004+01:00

The sun comes out and suddenly everyone is feeling that little more up for fun. Is it all of the sun-kissed skin? Simply the appearance of skin? That extra glass of rose? That additional round of pints? Whatever it is – the effects are everywhere!! And we’re keen to support all of that fun!

So, if you’ve been looking at our Thursday night speed dating but not been able to get here after a day at your high powered job, we have just the avenue of adventure for you!

New to the London dating scene is Sunday afternoon speed dating.

Click here to find out more and book your place. At only £10 / person, it’s time to give it a go!

Speed dating is fun, and it works. Here's an excerpt from an email the Original Dating guys (who run the events at artisan & vine) received last week regarding our Thurs night speed dating:
"Hi there, I just wanted to email some feedback that I met someone at one of your events, at the Artisan and Vine pub in November of last year, and that we have been seeing each other ever since. So thank you! I had come along with friends to try something different and never expected anything serious to come out of it, so was pleasantly surprised, and would recommend it to friends!"

Image: yeah, that's the front door to the bar.

World Cup at artisan & vine

2010-06-05T07:04:00.002+01:00

We’ve had so much fun thinking about ideas for the World Cup at artisan & vine. We have our fab new beers on tap – Peroni and Erdinger – and bar stools ready for swivelling.

We’ve also introduced a few special promotions… here’s the deal:

AUSSIE PROMO: a free can of Fosters for everyone at the bar each time Australia score a goal*

WORLD CUP WIDOWS PROMO: half price wine for groups of 4 or more ladies during each game of the World Cup*

GROUP GAME PROMOS: listed on our World Cup Wall Chart here*

That’s right, we have an artisan & vine World Cup Wall Chart, showing which games are on when, which we’ll be showing, and what additional deals we have on for each match.

Relax, sit back, come to your local female friendly, family friendly bar to watch the World Cup live.

*terms and conditions apply

Image: the completely awesome artisan & vine World Cup Wall Chart

Another perspective on English Wine

2010-06-04T02:45:00.005+01:00

Looking for another perspective on English wine for this English Wine Week?

Click below to read what Tim Atkins MW had to say in today's issue of The Times.

I'm in enthusiastic agreement with Tim's Top Six English Sparkling Wines (as you could guess, we stock half of them!) and of course his praise of English sparkling wines and the tremendous progress that the industry has made in recent years.

I have a little more time for the English still wines from "non-noble" grapes than Tim seems to. Seyval, Bacchus, et al may not currently be producing the most complex or world changing wines, but they do reflect our fresh English terroir, creating fresh easy-drinking wines. Come by a&v sometime to try.

See what you think by reading The Times article here.

Image: grapes getting ready to be wine at Bolney Wine Estate, Sussex

What happened at the English Wine Open Bottle Session

2010-06-04T02:37:00.003+01:00

This Wednesday gone saw our first ever English Wine Open Bottle Session. It was a fabulous night with 29 different English Sparkling, White, Rose and Red wines all on show.

Most popular wines on the night? It was a very close call but I reckon the Nyetimber Blanc de Blanc 2001 was probably the overall favourite; Camel Valley and Biddenden were also extremely popular producers.

Over forty people came along to take part in the two hour whirlwind wine tasting. And there were not a small number of curious Australians and Americans among them! The French contingency respectfully declined.

Image: a new wine to artisan & vine, the Warden Abbot from Warden Abbey, Bedfordshire was also popular, and has become one of my favourite English white wines.

12 Vineyards English wine case

2010-05-30T13:42:00.005+01:00

At artisan & vine we stock no lesse than 12 English vineyards in our wine bar and shop. 12 English vineyards and at least 25 English wines. artisan & vine has London's longest and best English wine list.

Featuring 12 vineyards is a rather convenient number to create a special 12 Vineyards Wine Case, which is exactly what we've done!

Curious about English wine? We've collected the best to create 12 Vineyards Case. Here you can taste a signature wine from 12 of our favourite English vineyards. This is the ultimate way to taste wines from all over England in the comfort of your own home or with friends for your own comprehensive English wine tasting.

Included in the pack are:

SPARKLING WINES
Limney Sparkling, Davenport Vineyards, Kent
Sirius Rose, Bolney Wine Estate, East Sussex
Classic Cuvee, Nyetimber Wine Estate, West Sussex
Knightsbridge, Ridgeview Wine Estate, West Sussex

WHITE WINES
Warden Abbot, Warden Abbey, Bedfordshire
Coleridge Hill, Three Choirs Vineyard, Gloucestershire
Organic Orion, Quoins Organic Vineyard, Wiltshire
Bacchus Dry, Camel Valley Vineyards, Cornwall

ROSE WINES
Rose, a'Becketts Vineyards, Wiltshire

RED WINES
Gamay, Biddenden Vineyards, Kent
Oxford Regatta, Brightwell Vineyards, Oxfordshire
Tyrannosaurus Red, Furleigh Estate, Dorset

Click here to buy a 12 Vineyards English wine case, available with free delivery anywhere in mainland England.

Click here to see the full range of English wines we currently have available at artisan & vine.

Why does artisan & vine specialise in English wine?

2010-05-29T13:11:00.004+01:00

Hurrah! English Wine Week is upon us and, of course, as the owner of London's first wine bar and shop to specialise in English wine, every blog entry I make this week will be about English wine. Let's start at the beginning: Why English wine?

Why would an Aussie (me), reared on belting Shiraz and sun-scorched Chardonnay choose to open a wine bar and shop that would specialise in English wine?

Yes, I think English wine tastes good. I'm a wine lover, there is wine from pretty much every country that tastes good to me. Good taste gets you over a hurdle, but it doesn't warrant investing your entire life savings to open a specialist wine bar.

The beauty of English wine is that it is almost exclusively made by such small producers, with no significant budget for flavour manipulation or artificial vineyard treatments, that the wine cannot help but reflect the Sense of Place of where it's from. Most English wine is extremely distinctly English, which in a modern age of mass-production and global knowledge sharing, is no small feat.

I’ve travelled a lot and lived in a few different countries. One of my favourite ways of coming to know a country or region is through indulging in the wines of that region. It’s that same old speech from me: Sense of Place, Sense of Place! There is no question in my mind that English wines are underexposed in their own, let alone in the global, market. At the same time as local food production in England is enjoying a celebrity chef inspired renaissance, English wines sit on the shelves of local community markets or the homes of wine maker’s relatives; it’s a fascinating contrast.

In order to bring the English wine experience into artisan & vine, I insisted on only working with winemakers who would deal with me directly – no distributors or wholesalers. I visited a wide range of English vineyards and tasted over 300 English wines to come to the 25 or so we have on our list at any one time. The wines are generally fresh, low alcohol and easy drinking – and they’re getting better with every vintage! English wine making may be in something of an infancy - I view this as an exciting thing.

After nearly two years of serving English wines to our customers I am proud to report a very positive response. The feedback we get often is that people are happy simply to be given the option to have a taste of home. The Bacchus from our friends Bob and Carol of Brightwell Vineyard in Oxfordshire remains one of our best selling wines in the bar while three of the five best selling wines (at time of writing) on the artisan & vine online shop are English (Nyetimber Classic Cuvee, Camel Valley Bacchus Dry and Biddenden Ortega). It’s clear that the demand is there. So how is supply? Well... I have to save something to blog about tomorrow...

Image: artisan & vine's vineyard day trip to the quaint Bolney Wine Estate in East Sussex in June 2009.

English Wine Week 29 May – 6 June

2010-05-28T12:35:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow sees the beginning of English Wine Week. As usual, we’ll have at least one English sparkly, white and red available for you to try by the glass and a couple of English wines on Happy Hour (5pm-7pm) for you to experiment with too!

The pinnacle of artisan & vine’s English Wine Week celebrations is our Open Bottle Session this Wednesday, 2 June.

What is an Open Bottle Session?

We have an open bottle of every English wine that we stock at artisan & vine – around 25 bottles. For £10/person, you get a glass & the ability to taste as many of those English wines as you can. All the bottles on tasting will be available for sale to take home or drink in the bar.

The Open Bottle Session will run from 7pm until 9pm - enough to let you taste a new wine every 5 minutes!

It's a fabulous opportunity to taste London's best range of English wines at a fantastic price.
Vineyards on show will include: Davenport Vineyards (Kent), Camel Valley Vineyards (Cornwall), Nyetimber Wine Estate (West Sussex), Biddenden Vineyards (Kent), Brightwell Vineyards (Oxfordshire), Bolney Wine Estate (East Sussex), Ridgeview Wine Estate (West Sussex), Three Choirs Vineyards (Gloucestershire), a’Becketts Vinetard (Wiltshire), Warden Abbey (Bedfordshire), Quoins Organic Vineyard, (Wiltshire) and Furleigh Estate (Dorset)

Click here to reserve your place.

Image: Three Choirs Vineyard in Gloucestershire

News and reviews of artisan & vine

2010-05-26T23:03:00.003+01:00

It's probably true that we're a little easily excited at artisan & vine. Can you think of a better way to live life?

One thing that excites us most is seeing reviews or news about us. We're always delighted when others get involved in the dream we're trying to make a reality.

Click here to see some of our favourite press articles and reviews on artisan & vine.

Image: we made The Times in London just this month and are still on a high! Yes... re-remark it if we must... we are rather often excited.

Wine Facts: How Wine Ages

2010-05-24T08:29:00.008+01:00

Not all wine improves with age. Some wine is more alcoholic vinegar than wine within years of bottling. How can you know which wines will improve with age and which will collapse?

In general, wines that are designed to be enjoyed for freshness and youthful fruitiness should be drunk young. Include within this category most white and rose wines and any lighter style reds, Beaujolais for example. These are wines whose fresh fruit flavours are likely to die within 2-4 years of bottling and which do not have the tannins or structure within the bottle to develop further.

Wines that taste better with aging are wines where a more complex combination of acids, sugars, minerals, pigments, tannins and flavour compounds need longer to integrate. High quality reds and whites will fall into this category.

As a general - if crude - rule, the more expensive a wine is, the more likely it is to improve with age.

The unlucky truth is that even the wine maker cannot know when exactly is the best time to drink any one wine. The best we can do is ask the person selling us a wine; they should know the story of a given wine in their shop and should taste it regularly enough to know it’s current condition.

Image: I asked Olivier from Domaine D’Arlot in Burgundy when I should drink some of his aging Pinot Noirs. He told me to call him when I was ready to open the bottle and he would let me know if it was ok or not. It’s all that exact :)

Randall Grahm at artisan & vine

2010-05-22T13:29:00.003+01:00

Wine Unearthed are proud to present
from Bonny Doon Vineyard, California for One Night Only...
Randall Grahm Unplugged

at artisan & vine

Join us for a great evening with Randall, the Wines, the Book (and good food for good measure!)
Randall Grahm is the visionary, irreverent winemaker and President-for-Life of Bonny Doon Vineyard. His goal is to produce wines in a natural, un-manipulated manner, imbued with life force! Cosmic wines for Cosmic times. Often described in the same breath as a genius, madman, and philosopher, the original Rhone Deranger has been at the vanguard of all that has been exciting (and controversial) in the American wine world in the last 2 decades. A champion of screwcaps , a convert to Biodynamics, he has now taken the bold step to list all of his ingredients on the back labels of his wines and is now experimenting with ageing his wines in amphorae and glass jars.

Monday 7th June 7.30pm £35

The Wine Tasting
To kick things off we'll start the evening with an apéritif and some canapes (hopefully outside if the weather is good!) before moving onto the main event.
In his own inimitable way Randall will take you on a guided tour of his new streamlined range of wines. On his quest to make only ‘Vins de terroir’ I am sure Randall hopes that the wines will speak for themselves, but never short of a word or five Randall will be on hand to talk about his wines, the universe and everything in between. Food will be served throughout the event.

BEEN DOON SO LONG
If you have ever read the back label of a bottle of Bonny Doon, you will realise that Randall likes to write ! His first book, or ‘Vinthology’ Been Doon So Long won the 2010 James Beard Foundation Award for best drinks book, and takes readers on a rollercoaster ride from wine to philosophy to rock opera to literary parody and back again.

“Randall Grahm is the Willy Wonka of the wine world and Been Doon So Long is intelligent, insightful and mischievous. It is a work of Genius” - Jamie Goode

Get your first edition copy signed by the man himself on the night pre-order online now at special price£19.50(rrp £24.95)

How often do you get the chance to meet a man who has an asteroid named after him?

You’d be mad to miss it, but don’t just take our word for it, here’s what Jancis Robinson has to say:“Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon in California is truly an exception in almost every way. His wine names, labels, packaging and news[?]letters [aka streams of consciousness] have injected more fun into the self-conscious world of wine than all other wine producers put together..”

Click here to buy tickets for the night or by the book online from our fabulous friends at Wine Unearthed.

Image: biodynamic wine making legend Randall Grahm

New beers on tap: what and why

2010-05-21T19:59:00.003+01:00

I write to you this week in something of a state of shock. Oddly, it is shock without surprise. I knew what was coming. I didn’t realise it would be so big, or so illuminated or so… well… so darn attractive. And we’re only two-thirds into the journey!

Some big boys arrived at artisan & vine this week and they’ve certainly made their presence felt. 3ft high Peroni and Erdinger beer taps now tower above our bar; as if to challenge the rows of little artisan wine bottles lined up across the way on our back-bar.

We tried working with organic English beer at artisan & vine, in keeping with the theme for wines. I come to the conclusion that one can only be niche when one offers choice within a niche. We can be niche in local and natural wines because we have over 100 of them for you to choose from. I conclude that when there are only 1 or 2 options, best make it something that most people are likely to know and like. Enter the big beer brands. With Peroni, Erdinger and Moretti, we’ve maintained our commitment to quality and taste.

These new beer taps are more shrines to their hop-fathers than simple drink dispensers. According to beer lovers (of which I apologetically cannot confess to be one), these beers taste as good as the aesthetically outstanding taps and glassware look. Maybe these new beers will even convert me.

Peroni and Erdinger are available on tap at artisan & vine from today. Birra Moretti will be available on tap from Tuesday.

We still have 1 keg of Freedom lager which we’ll be serving on tap all week end if you’d like to have one last taste of England!

Image: our new very ornate pieces of bar equipment

Nyetimber Classic Cuvee & Blanc de Blanc

2010-05-20T14:10:00.005+01:00

As you'd expect, our best selling wines on the artisan & vine Online Shop tends to move around a bit. I've previously written about the wines that are currently sitting at #1, #2, #4 and #5 within this blog. Recently, Nyetimber's Classic Cuvee 2003 climbed our charts to take the #3 position. How exciting!

I first tasted the Nyetimber Classic Cuvee at a friend's dinner party. It is immediately evident why Nyetimber has earned it's sterling reputation in sparkling wine making. Gorgeous depth and complexity of flavours, lasting finish, soft toasty notes. We're currently stocking the 2003 vintage, though 2005 is just around the corner and will be with us by Summer.

In particularly exciting news, the Classic Cuvee's sister wine, the Nyetimber Blanc de Blanc 2001, won a Gold Medal in this year's International Wine Challenge (IWC), of which I was a judge (check out my previous blog entry on judging at IWC 2010 here). We're selling the Nyetimber Blanc de Blanc 2001 both in store and online now too... best grab a bottle before it sells out!

Image: artisan & vine online shop #3 on the best seller list: Nyetimber Classic Cuvee 2003

Precious Metals: The Art of Alice Cescatti

2010-05-18T09:47:00.002+01:00

We have some genuinely exciting new art up at artisan & vine. The most exciting thing is that it is all created by one of our fabulous customers, Alice Cescatti. And how lucky we are to have Alice! Her past commissions include: The Curator of Sculpture, The Louvre, Paris; Cartier, Paris; The Sultan of Brunei; Alberto Pinto Agency, Paris; Grosvenor House Hotel, London and Claridges, London. Blatantly, this is a list that artisan & vine belongs on :)

Alice’s expertise is in blending precious metals with water gilding and painting techniques to create incredible landscape paintings. All of Alice’s work on show at artisan & vine is for sale, please ask at the bar for pricing.

I think Alice’s art has added a very beautiful and very personal touch to our very personal wine bar.

Image: Alice’s work is inspired by time she’s spent living in New Zealand, Vietnam, the South Pacific and… London!

Wine Facts: How Wine is Made

2010-05-17T10:07:00.002+01:00

As you’re reading this blog, you are probably already aware that there are a lot of variations in the important little steps to how a wine is made. This little article is aimed at giving you a summary of the key steps in making wine. By analogy, this guide is like saying the way to get from London to Edinburgh is to go North; options of train vs car vs stopovers vs B-roads vs etc etc are the sorts of “details” we’re skimming over.

The overview remains of import: there’s a lot to be said for knowing which way is North! The steps:

1. Grapes are picked and collected.

2. For white wines, the grapes are pressed so that the skins are left behind and just the grape juice ferments. For red wines, the grapes are left with their skin on to ferment, and then after the colour and flavours have been extracted, the red grapes are pressed to leave behind skin. (Fermentation is the process by which sugars in the grape are converted to alcohol).

3. Wines – whether red or white – may be aged in some kind of holding device – a bottle, a barrel, a tank. Wines can be aged for months or years or not at all.

4. Wines are bottled and labeled for distribution and sale.
Seems as simple as travelling North… the art is navigating the traffic jams, road works and then optimising lovely scenery and local peculiarities along the way!

Image: renowned winemaker Matthieu Cosse shows me some of the incredible new infrastructure they have in place at Domain La Coste in Provence where they are refining the science of natural wine making.

Visit to a'Becketts Vineyard, Wiltshire

2010-05-14T10:51:00.006+01:00

What seems a stone age ago (I had to get some kind of pun in here some where), I went to visit a'Beckett's Vineyard by Stonehenge in Wiltshire. It was actually last week end, late at night on the way back from a week end with Andrew's parents in Devon.

I was delighted to see that Paul, the owner and winemaker at the vineyard, has decided to label his white wines with the grape variety. We're now stocking his Pinot Auxerrois - a grape variety often used in England but rarely labelled as such due to it's unfriendly pronunciation prospects. I think it's great.

It's an incredibly beautiful little vineyard of 6 acres of vines and 6 acres of orchards. A'Becketts produce apple juice & cider along with their range of white, rose, red and sparkling wine.

I picked up a case of their full throttle rose as well as the Pinot Auxerrois, for us all to enjoy over the Summer. Come by & have a taste of Wiltshire!

Image: wine maker and owner, Paul Langham, shows me his range of deliciously light and fruity wines. I seem pretty happy about it :)

Tim Atkin MW in The Times on Natural Wine

2010-05-13T12:07:00.002+01:00

Today was a good day for natural wine. Natural wine has a lot of good days, but I reckon today was particularly good.

Tim Atkin MW, renowned wine writer and TV presenter, put together his thoughts on Natural Wine, published in today's issue of The Times. The article, entitled "Let the grapes express themselves naturally" summarises some of the commercial issues facing natural wines, commenting that "Natural wines are the opposite of mass-produced wines, of “spoofulated”, personality-free beverages that could come from almost anywhere".

At artisan & vine, we couldn't agree with Tim more!

The article also included a selection of Tim's six top Natural Wines. Among these were two that are available from artisan & vine. Here are Tim's picks, as well as his insightful tasting notes:

2009 Verd Albera, Emporda (£9.90, 13 per cent, http://www.artisanandvine.com/) From the area of Emporda in northern Catalonia, this is a very Mediterranean blend of garnacha blanca, garnacha gris and muscat. It’s perfumed and unoaked with citrus and orange peel flavours and crisp acidity.

2008 Clos Ouvert Huasa, Maule (£23, 14 per cent, http://www.artisanandvine.com/) It doesn’t happen very often, but once or twice a year, I taste a wine that blows my mind. This old vine, unirrigated Chilean red, made from the local país grape by a Burgundian ex-pat is silky and fine with incredible complexity.

It doesn't get much better than that!

Come by to taste Tim's picks. I've put together a special mixed case based on some of the other wines he particularly enjoyed while at artisan & vine here.

Image: the good old fashioned Times newspaper article; click the image to see the online version

Wednesday wine tasting: Chilean wine

2010-05-12T09:25:00.006+01:00

We try to mix things up from week to week at artisan & vine's Wednesday evening wine tastings. So, while last week we were in the Alsace and next week we're in Australia, today we're in Chile. The idea is that you could come to the bar every Wednesday and get a broad mix of flavours, stories and facts.

Before we zoom in on Chile, let's talk a little about South America, which, like most of the New World, is something we don't have a lot of at artisan & vine. This is not a deliberate choice. There are simply more natural wines from Europe available in London than there are from other regions.

South America is pretty exciting for the wine world because, although it's had wine grapes longer than any other part of the New World (since 1531), it's in its relative infancy on the global wine scene. Chile, although producing less wine than Argentina, was the first of the South American countries to make a meaningful entrance onto the world wine stage.

Isolated by the Pacific Ocean on the West and the Andes on the East, Chile produces pretty reliably healthy grapes. It's a good place for organic and biodynamic vineyards. This is a place where the days are particularly hot and the nights particularly cold, which is great for allowing a long, mature ripening of grapes - & so those fab fruity flavours!

Tonight we're going to be tasting wines from two Chilean producers. The first is Vina Von Siebenthal, headed by a former Swiss Lawyer now producing indulgently fruity wines in the Aconcagua Valley. We'll taste a pure Carmenere - a Bordeaux grape that has become almost synonymous with Chilean red wine; as well as a Bordeaux blend (Cabernet Franc, Melot and Cabernet Sauvignon). Bordeaux grapes have long been popular in Chile, though we're now starting to see other grapes such as Syrah, Pinot Noir and Riesling make their way down.

The second producer we'll be tasting is Clos Ouvert, headed by Burgundian wine maker Louis-Antoine Luyt. These wines are really exciting. In his recent visit to artisan & vine, Tim Atkin MW felt the same: "Just discovered Clos Ouvert from Maule at Artisan and Vine. The most exciting Chilean wines I have tasted in years. Wow!"

By way of contrast, we're going to taste a pure Carmenere from Clos Ouvert, as well as a Bordeaux blend, and then, most exciting I think, a 100% Pais wine. Pais is Chile's indigenous "peasant's grape"... you're going to love it!

We still have some spaces available at tonight's Chilean wine tasting. Email welcome@artisanandvine.com to sign up!

Click here to see profiles of the range of Chilean wines we currently stock at artisan & vine.

Image: the incredible Huasa 2008 from Clos Ouvert is 100% Pais and certainly worth a taste at artisan & vine!

London Wine and Travel meetup Group

2010-05-11T21:58:00.004+01:00

Have you seen these meetup groups online? They have meetups groups for all sorts of interests and hobbies. This Sunday gone we hosted the London Wine and Travel Meetup for a three course meal and wine tasting game.

I was stoked to read the reviews that participants had written up:

Amanda: 'very good!!! many thanks I wanted to rate it 10 stars but only 5 were available so :-) '

Maggie: ‘I loved the restaurant; the food was simply delicious, and a good range of different range of wines. I loved the fact we were encouraged to guess the right wine. This taught me quite a lot. Great afternoon, all round’

Stephanie: 'A fantastic way to have Sunday lunch. Meeting new people over good food and wine. It was well organised and was well planned to help everyone mingle.’

Michael: ‘Really excellent event! Terrific wines, great food and really good company!’

Amanda: ‘Great food, interesting wines and a chance to meet new people with similar interests, perfect!’

Click here to read more about this event and this really fun and social wine group.

Image: this is the photo icon of the London Wine and Travel Meetup Group. I don't have a lot else to say about that.

Wine profile: Camel Valley Bacchus Dry

2010-05-09T21:54:00.002+01:00

Today's blog post: a wine profile on what is currently the 2nd Best Selling wine on the artisan & vine online shop. All my bloggy wine profiles are found by the tag "wine profiles" - who'd've thunk?

Long long ago when Andrew was trying to romance me, he bought be a bottle of Camel Valley Bacchus Dry (a former vintage) so, this wine has I suppose unlikely romantic connotations for me.

Can we call this a Love Potion? As things have panned out, I'd say yes. Can I guarantee it will win the heart of the one you're courting? As I a former Management Consultant, I'm not in the habit of guaranteeing a lot :)

That said, I will guarantee that this is one of England's most pleasing still white wines. Floral, fruity, a surprising depth and length of finish.

Seems other people like it too. The Times 21 April 2009 said: ‘Best Value English Still Wine': ‘Young, aromatic, fresh and zesty, England's answer to Sancerre. A bright accompaniment to seafood, full of zip and fruit. They like it in The House Of Commons.'

Take a taste of Cornwall's version of now classic Bacchus grape today!

Click here to see the full range of Camel Valley wines that we stock at artisan & vine.

Natural wine & English wine tastings every Wednesday

2010-05-08T19:18:00.005+01:00

It's about time I gave a plug to some of our upcoming wine tasting events.

Because they're awesome.

Here's what's coming up:

Wed, 12 May Chilean wine (including wines that Tim Atkin declares as the most exciting Chilean wines he's tasted in years) £20 / person
Wed, 19 May New World Wine (Australia, New Zealand, USA) £20 / person
Wed, 26 May Italian Wine £20 / person
Wed, 2 June English Wine Week: Open Bottle Session £10 / person
Wed, 9 June Food and wine matching £20 / person

As you see, every Wednesday at artisan & vine we run a wine tasting on a specific theme of English wine or natural wine. These are genuinely fascinating events and a lot of fun. For £20/person, you’ll taste 5 incredible wines (last Wednesday we tasted a Grand Cru Riesling worth £60) and have some matched canapes, as well as all of my thoughts – fact and editorial – on that week’s theme.

A wonderful night out for catching up with friends or a different kind of date.
Click here for more information or email welcome@artisanandvine.com or call 0207 228 4997 to book your place now!

Image: me tasting at Comte Lafon in Burgundy. Researching to bring you guys the best wines and information is tough tough work.

The Wine Patio & Plushification

2010-05-07T12:56:00.003+01:00

Scrutiny of the weather forecast is something of a preoccupation of mine. As well as a steady interest in how the 2010 English vintage might turn out, artisan & vine’s humble (yet awesome) Wine Patio relies on the weather. But the weather just isn’t playing ball. For those new to The Adventures of artisan & vine, the Wine Patio is our answer to the Beer Garden, and it’s a rather lovely place to while away some sunny hours.

Frustrated by the absence of sun, I’ve opted to take our decorative hands back inside. The Plushification that took part in our bathrooms some weeks back has progressed into the main body of the bar with fresh paint, exciting new art work and due to popular demand - bar stools!

The sun may be holding back on us a little this year but we hope you’ll like the Plushification we have going on inside of a&v in the meantime!

Image: I love our cool new bar stools - please do come by to give them a swivel!

Wine facts: a Year in the Vineyard

2010-05-06T12:26:00.003+01:00

How do you know if what you’re buying is a good or bad vintage? What does that even mean? It’s about what happens in the life of a vineyard in a given year. For example, in 2009, it was a relatively long, mild Summer, that means a long, healthy grape growing season, a good vintage!

Knowing what happens in a Year in the Vineyard helps us to understand what creates a good or bad vintage. Here’s the shortform:

Jan – Feb: the vine grower prunes vines to concentrate nutrients toward the grapes rather than leaf production

Mar: ploughing the soil to control weeds and improve soil health

Apr – Jul: more pruning, positioning vines on their trellises for optimum sun exposure, frost and pest mitigation efforts.

Aug – Sep: harvest! Deciding exactly when to pick is critical, too early will make too acidic wines, too late will make too sweet wines.

Oct: fermentation of grapes in the winery. Decisions about ageing and blending must be made.

Nov – Dec: tasting the young wine continues, ensuring whatever wine making path is chosen: oak ageing, early bottling, blending between grapes; is on track for a winning wine!

Image: superstar winemaker Henri Milan shows me around his delightfully colourful winery in early Sept 2009.

Wednesday wine tasting: the Alsace!

2010-05-05T08:52:00.006+01:00

Wednesday is wine tasting day at artisan & vine. Each Wednesday at 8pm we commence enthusing and imbibing along a set wine theme. You can see what I have planned for the coming weeks here.

Tonight we're exploring the Alsace.

A lovely year of my life was spent living in Germany, just south of the Rheingau. It was a fab base for exploring not just the Rhine Valley but also Mosel, and on one particularly long trip, the Alsace.

Alsatian architecture looks a little Germanic. The people often speak French and (mercifully for me) German. The grapes and style of wine making are similar to those you'll find in Germany. The best wines in both Alsace and Germany come from Riesling - we'll be tasting three 100% Riesling wines tonight. Other popular grape varieties offer a delightful balance floral aromas and minerally palates: Sylvaner, Gewurtztraminer, the Three Pinots.

I often hear complaints about Riesling: customers often can't tell how sweet a wine might be before they buy it; a fact particularly true of Alsatian wines with their typically non-descript French labelling (though Alsatian wines do - in contrast to most French wines - list grape varieties on the label! another welcome Germanic influence). I think customers are right to have this complaint and wish I could offer a better solution than: only buy from bars or shops where the salesperson can confidently help you with what you're buying.

We regularly face the same dilemma with natural wine. I come to the same conclusion over and again: better transparency in wine bottle labelling is the only way to help buyers choose beyond Sauvignon Blanc.

Oh, before I sign off for today, I must add that we still have places left at tonight's tasting. It's £20/person to taste 5 wines (including a Grand Cru today!), so please do come along!

Click here to see some of the wines of the Alsace that we currently list at artisan & vine.

Image: Domaine Josmeyer, one of many brilliant biodynamic producers in the Alsace we'll taste tonight.

Furleigh Estate and Tyrannosaurus Red

2010-05-04T13:48:00.007+01:00

Andrew's parents live near Honiton in Devon. It's a stunning part of the world. Going to visit is always a treat. We normally like to tie a few vineyard visits in with each trip down. Yesterday we visited Furleigh Estate, just off the Jurassic Coast in Dorset.

What a fabulously romantic venue for a vineyard: growing above the soils where dinosaurs once roamed. For the fantasty novelist in me, the imagery was just far too compelling to drive by.

The image above is of the brand new vineyard and winery that they have created nestled within the ridiculously rolling hills of Bridport. The weather wasn't the greatest, but this was a bank holiday week end in England, what should one expect?

Furleigh Estate is surrounded by woodland and wildlife. We saw buzzards, a kite, pheasants and partridge. It was formerly a dairy farm. Vines were planted in 2005 to create a startingly modern vineyard and winery.

Over 22,000 vines grow on the south facing slopes of the Estate. The usual English sparkling suspects are all there: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meurnier; as well as English still wine darlings: Bacchus and Rondo.

I was in search of "Tyrannosaurus Red", a Rondo / Pinot Noir blend, with some Triomphe. It's full of red berry fruits and is an enjoyable bit of red English tipple. I'd tasted in at the English Wine trade tasting and was ready to put it on our shelves at artisan & vine. You may be shocked to hear that this is of course a particularly difficult mission to fail at.

Tyrannosaurus Red is now available at artisan & vine (well, will be from tomorrow onward when I'm back in London) for £23.50 in the bar and £13.80 to take home.

Image: Furleigh Estate, nestled within the rolling hills of Dorset, 5km inland from the Jurassic Coast, with characteristic Bank Holiday week end skies.

Friends of artisan & vine

2010-05-02T18:20:00.004+01:00

I've been thinking a bit lately about whether it's right to include promotional type information within my blog posts. I come to the - at least temporary - conclusion that people interested in an artisan & vine blog might also be interested in what various special events or promotions we may be running at a given time. My promotional posts are labelled clearly as such, distinct from more of the fact, tip or story based entries. I hope this makes it easy for readers to sift through the various bits of interest. My objective is to blog more frequently on facts, tips & stories, and to share promotional and event information as seems useful to y'all.

On that note, I'd like to focus today's blog on something I'm particularly proud of: our friends of artisan & vine card.

The "friends of artisan & vine" card can be used to claim various benefits and gifts with artisan & vine. It may be bought at the bar or online for yourself, a friend or loved one.

Here's what a "friends of artisan & vine" card gets you:

• One free main meal

• A Birthday bottle of wine, to drink in at artisan & vine

• 50% off your next artisan & vine wine tasting event

• 15% off your next artisan & vine online wine case

• Monthly and weekly exclusive offers and discounts

• Subscription to the artisan & vine newsletter

• A happy feeling for supporting local and natural artisan wine makers

Cards cost £10 each and generate over £50 worth of benefit, simply by redeeming the subscription offers - we have even more specials and discounts announced via our newsletter each month! Terms and conditions apply. Cards can be bought at the bar or via our online shop.

Order online now and elect to pick it up at the bar or have it delivered for free to your desired delivery address.

Then, you need only show your membership card at the bar, or enter relevant discount codes on the online shop (this will be emailed to you following subscription) to redeem benefits.

Click here to see full terms and conditions for using the friends of artisan & vine card.

Text on back of card reads:

artisan & vine is London’s first wine bar and shop to specialise in Local English and Natural wines. Friends of artisan & vine are friends of artisan wine makers.

We believe in supporting local English producers. We believe in supporting wine makers who work sustainably and without chemical manipulation globally.

We are not only what we eat. We are also what we drink, what we experience and what we choose to support.

Drink Local * Drink Natural * Drink Artisan

Our best seller: Clos du Chapeau, Domaine de l'Arlot

2010-05-01T11:39:00.003+01:00

Since sunshine has again abandoned us, I'm going back to red. I thought it was worth sharing thoughts on what has become our Online Shop's Best Seller: Clos du Chapeau from Domaine de l'Arlot in Prémeaux-Prissey, Burgundy.

Domaine de l'Arlot is an absurd place. No where in the world should be this beautiful. I can't even think of a way to be more Burgundian than these guys manage. The estate is regal but not overstated; the gardens are manicured yet decorated by stone carvings from hundreds of years of children playing there; the wines are elegant and opulent all at once. For me, a bottle of these wines is a bottle of Burgundy. Beautiful, sumptuous red Burgundy.

I have to agree with our customer's excellent taste: Clos du Chapeau is absolutely one of my favourite wines on our list. It is strawberries and smoke all at once, & for me is a more enjoyable drink than many of its Premier Cru companions.

There's a reason wine lovers love Pinot Noir so much & this wine can show you. Perfection in a bottle, ready for you to drink now (though it will age if, like me, you'd like to keep some for home).

Click here for photos of Domaine de l'Arlot and my travels around Burgundy.

Click here to buy the wines of Domaine de l'Arlot with free home delivery!

artisan & vine’s Eat Out Manifesto

2010-04-30T11:15:00.006+01:00

Damn straight I’m getting in on electoral fever!

Here’s our Eat Out Manifesto:

We believe that all Londoners should be able to eat out any day of the week, regardless of occasion or cause for celebration.
We believe that Monday through Thursday should provide the same, if not better, opportunities for eating out as over-crowded week ends.
We believe that Friday is better when it starts with sparkling wine.
We believe that outstanding wine should be available with every eating experience, and enjoyed without compromise.

To fulfil these ideologies, we pledge to offer all customers the opportunity to enjoy a Prix Fixe menu of £11 for two courses and £13 for three courses, every day of the week.

Click here to see the menus on offer in our Eat Out Manifesto.

Happy Hour and my medieval PR skills

2010-04-29T13:13:00.006+01:00

Yesterday someone on twitter said artisan & vine's PR skills are "medieval". It's true... we still haven't thought of anything better than relying on our customer's word of mouth & writing little witticisms about our latest ideas, discoveries or revelations. Well... here's my latest shot at homemade PR... like homemade wine or homemade cooking... I reckon there's a certain charm :)

I’m certain I don’t do enough to let you know about Happy Hour. I’m certain because any wine lover who knew about it would definitely be at the bar.

Happy Hour runs at artisan & vine every day from 5pm till 7pm. We always have 2 whites, 2 reds, a rose, a sweet wine and a sherry on Happy Hour. The deal is: you get to drink the selected wines at our off licence, rather than bar, prices. Because we are also an off licence, if you don’t finish the bottle at artisan & vine, we can cork it up for you to take home or to a BYO restaurant.

It’s an incredible deal.

We change the wines on offer regularly and you get them for a fantastic price. To get an idea of our off licence prices, click here to see the online shop, and see how Happy those hours between 5pm and 7pm really are!

Image: this stunning 2008 Albarino from Bonny Doon is currently on Happy Hour at artisan & vine; exactly the sort of opportunity any wine lover should jump on!

Wine Facts: a Brief History of Wine

2010-04-28T09:46:00.007+01:00

Every week I'm posting some Wine Facts, you can find them in this blog under the "Wine Facts" tag. This week: you need to know where you've been to know where you might go!

Pre-history through to Ancient Rome
Evidence of wine making and drinking emerges as early as ancient Babylon (3000BC) and Egypt (some sophisticated relics from 1900BC). Wine moves its way up to the Mediterranean with the Phoenicians in 1100BC and exists as a hallmark of Greek social life and culture throughout antiquity. Ancient Rome sees the first documentation of vintages and ageing with the legendary “Opimian”, of 121BC vintage, being drunk 125 years later!

The Middle Ages through to the 18th Century
The Middle Ages saw the emergence of the Church and monastical wine making. The one commercial exception to the Church’s vineyard domination was Bordeaux, with its market focused wine production for France and England. Bordeaux sets a precedent for the wine world of the future.
The wine industry grew and prospered in Europe up until the 17th century as it was the only safe and storable beverage of the time. Water and ale were largely unsafe and spirits and caffeinated drinks did not yet exist.
In the 17th century the European world opened to the Americas and Asia. This brought tea, coffee and chocolate. The Dutch developed spirits and hops were added to ale to make much more stable beer. As a reaction to these new competitive drinks, wine moved from being a necessity beverage to a prestige drink. The quality of wine improved greatly and by the 18th century, Europe had established many of its most successful quality wine regions and techniques.

The 20th Century
The 20th century saw science and industrialisation provide the basis for mass production and global distribution of wine. Hiccups around various Prohibition campaigns, a couple of world wars and more dangerous to the vine world – a lethal outbreak of the now infamous vine pest phylloxera – dented production levels from time to time, but the wine world had already proved itself hardy and continued to improve.

Today

It’s easy to get editorial on the state of the wine world today. Clearly, globalisation and the artificial tricks to producing wine for epic journeys and immediate supermarket stocking have taken their tolls on what was an artisanal product. Though, there is hope. Naturally, this brief account of the History of Wine must conclude with the spectacularly historic opening of London’s first wine bar to specialise in Local and Natural wines: artisan & vine. It says a lot for the luxury of our age that we have so many different wines and specialist wine bars to choose from.

Image: of course the Egyptians were at it.

How to meet new people AND enjoy amazing wine

2010-04-27T10:20:00.003+01:00

You already know we run exciting Speed Dating every other Thursday and fun Wine Tasting every Wednesday. Now we’ve combined the best of both to have Wine Dating! The next Wine Dating event at artisan & vine will be run on Sunday, 30 May at 2pm.

How does it work?

WineDating events are a great way to meet new people whilst tasting some great wines from around the world. Wine tasting dating allows you to meet people in groups of 6 rather than one-on-one like traditional speed dating.

What is the format of a WineDating event?

Our wine tasting events are totally different to any other dating events in London. On arrival you will greeted by our hosts who will allocate you a table number and a scorecard.
Once everyone has arrived I will begin with an introduction into tasting, some hints and tips plus a description of the six wines you will taste during the event. Everyone then takes their seats and the tasting of the first wine begins. Please remember to arrive on time as we can't always let you in if you're really late!
Once everyone is seated in their first group of six (normally 3 guys, 3 girls) the wine tasting begins! You then have around 12 minutes to taste the first wine, chat and get to know your first set of co-tasters.
When your 12 minutes is up we will signal the end of your first tasting session. At this point the guys move on to their next table and collect the wines for their next tasting group.
It's important to record the people you want to see after each tasting as you're going to be using our online matching system then day after the event!
This format until all groups have met all the members of the opposite sex and tasted all six wines.

Click here for more information and to book your place online!

Wine Profile: Cuvee Faustine 2007, Domaine Comte Abbatucci, Ajaccio, Corsica

2010-04-26T09:10:00.004+01:00

Any wine blog worth its weight in cork should have regular profiles of particularly exciting wines. You can find a collection of my favourite wines within this blog under the tag "Wine profiles".

Today, as the sun is here - if a little retreated this particular day - I must talk rose! In specific, this gorgeous Corsican rose, which currently ranks as the fifth best selling wine on the artisan & vine online shop, no small achievement!

On the magical island of Corsica, known in France as “Île de Beauté” (the Beauty Island”), the Domaine Comte Abbatucci extends over 100 ha of granitic sandy slopes, blending in with the wild but benevolent natural landscape.

Out of the estate’s 100 hectares, there are 20 ha of vines but also clementines, vegetables, olive trees, sheep… All farmed bio-dynamically since 2000. Jean-Charles strongly believes in Rudolph Steiner’s concept of a “farm unit”.

Being one of the oldest vineyard plantations in Corsica, the estate has been selected to study and experiment the reproduction of ancient vine varieties that are treasures of the Corsican viticulture. The estate grows a fascinating (and delicious) range of indigenous varieties: Vermentino, Niellucio, Sciaccarello and Barbarossa. Life on the estate is regulated by the rhythms of sun, moon and planets. The grapes harvested develop in health and harmony.

Today Jean-Charles’s wine quality is recognised by experts all over the world, wines that preserve the very particular and original flavours of the Corsican terroir. This wine is the ultimate rose experience. Light colour, displaying aromas of peach & apricot, red berries. A tender, subtle wine with outstanding freshness.

This is the wine to persuade those rose-doubters that the style is capable of greatness!

Naturally, it is available at artisan & vine wine bar, and on our online shop here.

London's Top 10 Wine Bars

2010-04-25T08:10:00.002+01:00

Drinking and going out authority Fluid London recently published their Top 10 Wine Bars list. Once again, we were delighted for artisan & vine to feature in the Top 10. Check out the write up by clicking here!

St George's Day English Wine Trade and Press Tasting

2010-04-24T10:16:00.013+01:00

Yesterday saw the celebration of England's patron saint: St George. In reality, St George's Day seems more to be a celebration of "Englishness" than saintliness. With that spirit in mind, Suvi, Karlee and I proceeded happily to Chelsea Football Stadium for the 2010 English Wine Trade Tasting.

The slogan of the English Wine Marketing Association is to "think English, drink English". I've been drinking English for some time now. As an Aussie, trying to appreciate the full "think English" experience, I'm considering spending more time queuing, discussing the weather and reading tabloids.

On a more pleasant note, I was delighted to taste that the 2009 vintage for some of my favourite producers were still very strong: Biddenden (Kent), Brightwell (Oxfordshire) and Bolney Estate (East Sussex) were all in fine form. Latest releases from Ridgeview (West Sussex), Nyetimber (West Sussex) and Camel Valley (Cornwall) (varying vintages as these were sparkling wines) similarly stood up well.

A slow start to my morning meant I didn't get to all of the tasting tables I would have liked - namely Three Choirs (Gloucestershire) and Sharpham (Devon) - though I'm committed to subsequent vineyard trips to these.

So, the fun bit: who are my new picks for our 2010-2011 wine list? I'm very excited about Quons Organic Vineyard (Wiltshire), who make a lovely wine from the Orion grape variety. I was very impressed by the rose and red wines from Furleigh Estate (Dorset) and the red wine, King Coel from Carter's Vineyards (Colchester). Last, though certainly not least, was a very fresh and refined couple of white wines from Warden Abbey Vineyard (Bedfordshire). Our 2010-2011 wine list will be published in May.

Overall, the quality of wines at this year's tasting was certainly up from last year. English wine producers are bringing a lot more finesse and fruit to their wine making. I think a lot of the wine makers are honing in on the style that suits their soils and grape varieties. Of course it could just be that 2009 was a fantastic year for wine grape growing.

29 May - 6 June is English Wine Week. That Wednesday, 2 June, our Wednesday Wine Tasting will be an open bottle session to taste an exciting range of English wines. It's going to be a special price of only £10/person to taste all of our great English wines. Click here for further details and to book your place.

Image: the English Wine Marketing Association slogan: Think English, Drink English

ANZAC Day: 25 April

2010-04-23T10:11:00.004+01:00

Today is St Georges Day. But I'm writing about ANZAC Day today. I'm writing about St Georges Day later; after I've tasted all of the English wines on show at today's St Georges Day tasting.

I'm writing about ANZAC Day today because I want to give you advance notice on what it's all about & what we're doing about it at artisan & vine.

This Sunday 25 April is ANZAC Day. As an Aussie, I’m going to need to tell you a little about it. Yes, you can expect to see a good number of Australians and New Zealanders out with BBQ and stubbies but I think it’s worth writing a little about what ANZAC Day is really about.

ANZAC = Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The original intent of ANZAC Day was to commemorate whose who fought at Gallipoli, Turkey during World War I. It now more broadly commemorates all those who died and served in military operations for their countries. It’s an important day for Australians and New Zealanders, not only because we remember the honourable sacrifice of over 10,000 Aus & NZ soldiers, not only because it was the first international military conquest we were a part of, and not only because this was an 8 month stalemate on Turkish shores. It’s for all of these things and the spirit of commitment, strength and honour, that came to form part of both of our national identities.

To commemorate the ANZACs and support widows and children of deceased veterans, we’ll be donating £1 from every bottle of Australian or New Zealand wine sold at artisan & vine this Sunday to London Legacy.

Please do come along and enjoy some Australian or New Zealand wine this Sunday; it’s no extra cost to you & will benefit this very worthy cause.

Image: ANZAC Cove in Gallipoli

Meet @ artisan & vine

2010-04-22T09:57:00.002+01:00

Back in my corporate life, I was always bewildered by the uninspiring and expensive venues we used to use for external team meetings, brainstorming sessions or training courses. Recently it occurred to me that I could do something about it - well, not retrospectively of course, but I could help make a brighter future for other corporate meeters :)

And so, artisan & vine recently opened our doors to corporate users by launching Meet @ artisan & vine, available to book from 9am -5pm Monday - Friday.

Meet @ artisan &v ine specialises in providing meeting space for organisers seeking something different, who in these cash-sensitive times, are rightly unwilling to pay for facilitates they will not use, but refuse to compromise on customer service, catering and style. Meet @ artisan & vine specialises in small-medium sized groups (up to 30 people) seeking informal, creative London conference facilitates for a highly competitive price.

The space is ideal for workshops, with plenty of room for break out sessions and boasts a great location only 5 minutes from Clapham Junction, Britain’s busiest train station. Even better, after your meeting has concluded, you and your team are already in one of London's best wine bars, ready for a relaxing evening with fine wine.Advance bookings are essential. Meeting space may be requested with as little as 12 hours notice.

Please click here for more details on cost and service packages.

Australia Days

2010-04-21T08:43:00.004+01:00

ANZAC Day is coming up this Sunday. Between that & the most excellent weather of late, I'm very much reminded of home and the big sun lavished vineyards we have. Earlier this year I spent a luxurious 3 weeks sunning it up at home in Australia. That place has a lot of vineyards and much less wine bars, which is a shame because the tyranny of distance makes it a real project to taste all of the exceptional boutique wines hidden across the country.

Australia really does has some outstanding wines, it’s a (another!) shame that so many of them just don’t make it over to our shores. I most enjoyed trying a large range of Semillon wines in the Hunter Valley (an easy 90 minutes from Sydney). We don’t often see Semillon as a single varietal wine here in the UK but if you get a chance, do give it a go – it’s a very powerful grape, strong citrus aromatics and a robust vegetal mouth. I’ll keep you posted on my hunt for a happy Semillon here in the UK.

An excellent resource you should check out if you love biodynamic wines and are headed to Australia is Max Allen’s comprehensive website: Red, White and Green. It provides an outstanding overview of biodynamic producers across Australia, which I came to depend upon while out there!

Image: me with dear ol’ Mum & Dad tasting wines at Macquariedale Vineyard, one of only two biodynamic vineyards in the Hunter Valley.

Wine Facts: Top 10 Wine Producing Countries

2010-04-20T11:50:00.003+01:00

Unable to share enough wine facts during our normal opening hours, we’ve decided to go “e” with the fact disbursement. Every week we’re going to include a mini-feature on interesting wine facts. You'll be able to find them all under the tag "Wine Facts" within this blog.

To kick off: the big picture – where wine is made and how much is being made. The following table lists the world’s 10 biggest wine producing countries, plus our beloved UK’s wine production*. By way of conversion, the UK’s production was nearly 2 million bottles.

1 France 51,700
2 Italy 49,631
3 Spain 38,173
4 USA 23,579
5 Argentina 15,400
6 Australia 14,260
7 China 11,800
8 South Africa 9,400
9 Germany 8,995
10 Chile 8,450
59 United Kingdom 14

Of the top ten wine producing countries, all have grown in production volumes since 1996 except the Old World superstars: France, Italy and Germany. Spain has hardly had a steady ride over the 10 year period either, with (relatively) widely fluctuating annual production figures. The most aggressive production growth in the top ten comes from, little surprise, Australia, which almost doubled its production in the last ten years.

The surprises? Did you know that China would be in the Top 10? Or that Argentina produces more than Australia?

* Source: The Wine Institute World Wine Production By Country, Trade Data And Analysis (TDA), volume figures are given in thousands of Hectoliters based on 2006 production.

International Wine Challenge

2010-04-19T21:04:00.002+01:00

This year I had the pleasure of being invited to judge at the International Wine Challenge (IWC). During the last week I joined some 300+ wine experts in blind tasting over 10,000 wines to determine which wines should take home coveted medals or commendations from the Challenge. The IWC is ‘the biggest blind tasting in the world’. The result of the tasting manifest in these little stickers (pictured) that you’ll see appear on bottles of wine that have won a Gold, Silver, Bronze or Commended award from the judges at the competition. For consumers, they represent a kind of quality guarantee.

Here’s how the process works:
1. In early April, 45,000+ bottles arrive at the Barbican Centre to be categorised by grape variety, region, etc.
2. For Week 1 of tasting, judges determine which wines should be tasted again in Week 2 for medal classification, which wines should be Commended, or which wines are not medal or commendation ready.
3. There is an added safety net for lower scoring wines, which are sent for re-tasting by the co-chairmen judges.
4. During Week 2 all of the higher scoring wines are re-tasted, again completely blind, and invariably by different judges, to determine which wines will take which medals.

Having moved from the corporate world to what is normally the very casual and artistic world of wine, I found the structure and organisation of the IWC to run with surprising finesse. Having seen what goes on behind the scenes, particularly the palate and integrity of my fellow judges, I reckon that these little IWC stickers are a pretty reliable indicator of a good wine. That said, one could most likely expect that, like Michelin stars for restaurants, these coveted little IWC medals might add a couple of pennies to the price of winning wines.

2010 Wine Patio & Spring menu additions

2010-04-18T09:01:00.004+01:00

Hurrah! FINALLY we got to plant the flowers for the 2010 Wine Patio. For those new to our beloved suburban wine bar, the Wine Patio is our most excellent advancement on the traditional Beer Garden. The trees you’ll recognise from previous editions of the Wine Patio: our crabapples have mercifully survived their 2nd winter out front of artisan & vine and are now in gorgeous pink blossom.
I’m trying to build my dream week-end afternoon: fresh homemade light meals, delicate rose wine, and a flower drenched Wine Patio to sit and enjoy it all in. To make it happen, we’ve introduced some fab new menu items: a gorgeous range of fresh ciabatta sandwiches, made-as-you-like omelets, Croque Monsieur, Salad Lyonnaise, and a host of other perfect Spring bites.
The new light meals menu will be available 12 noon – 3pm week ends and 6pm – 10pm every night. Click here to see our full food menu.

Image: is it safe to say Spring is here? The blossoms say yes!

English Wine Country

2010-04-17T09:58:00.004+01:00

Fantastic week end weather is exactly the thing for a day trip into what I’m beginning to think of as “English Wine Country”. This time of year, “Wine Country” - Sussex and Kent - we should still expect the vines to be as stark as Grapey (the incredibly creative name I’ve given to the single grapevine I have growing on the balcony of my London apartment), but I it's worth the trip all the same. Grapey is currently more Twiggy than Grapey.
A lot of you have been asking me about English vineyards worth visiting for the week end. The absolutely definitive place for finding English vineyards is the English Wine Producers website, which includes a fantastic map and regional vineyard listing. You’ll be surprised just how many vineyards there are all over England.
My recommendation for a short weekend or day trip from London is “Wine Country” – north Sussex and Southwest Kent – for the heaviest concentration of quality wine producing vineyards in England. Some of these vineyards are not open to the general public without prior arrangement.

My favourites of the ones that you can drop into without a booking are:
· Biddenden Vineyards, Kent (also for lovely cider)
· Ridgeview Wine Estate, East Sussex (incredible sparklies)
· Bolney Wine Estate, West Sussex (you need to book in advance for tour)

Brilliant vineyards that don’t have a visitor facility but are worth peeking at:
· Davenport Vineyards, East Sussex / Kent (excellent organic wines)
· Plumpton College, East Sussex (a school + working vineyard & winery)
· Nyetimber Vineyard, West Sussex (tragically closed doors!)

Further afield, my picks outside of “Wine Country” are:
· Camel Valley Vineyard, Cornwall (the multi award winners)
· Brightwell Vineyards, Oxfordshire (can be done in a London day trip)
· Three Choirs Vineyard, Gloucestershire (impossibly pretty setting)
· A’Becketts Vinetard, Wiltshire (a nice tie in with touristy Stonehenge visit)

Image: Sam Lindo, the Head Wine Maker at Camel Valley, & I brave the winds at his stunning vineyards in Cornwall. This was in Oct 2009 – can you believe it’s been that long since I was last at one of our English vineyards?!

Chilean Earthquake: Special Charity Tasting

2010-04-16T12:25:00.006+01:00

On 27 February, 2010, Chile experienced an 8.5 magnitude earthquake. The epicenter of the earthquake was offshore from the Maule Region, where Clos Ouvert, my favourite Chilean wine maker, is based.

As you can see from this image, the winery was severely damaged by the quake. While there were fortunately no fatalities at Clos Ouvert, there was a lot of damage to the winery and wines. Head wine maker, Louis-Antoine lost around 40% of each of his 2007 and 2008 vintages, which, for a young winery in only it's third vintage is quite a lot.

On Wednesday 21 April, we will be running an insightful wine tasting on the wines of Clos Ouvert to raise money to help Louis-Antoine re-build his winery.

Tickets are £20/person. £2 from every wine tasting ticket and £1 of every bottle of Clos Ouvert wine sold will be donated to earthquake relief efforts. (The £1 is donated whether you buy off licence or drink in).

We normally have 2 Clos Ouvert wines in stock, for this special occasion, we'll be tasting and selling 4 fabulous wines. All 4 red wines show incredible uniqueness & finesse – there’s a reason these guys are my favourite in Chile & the wines are delicious treat, all sense of charity aside.
Click here for more information and to book your place on this special Chilean Earthquake relief wine tasting

St John's Hill Christmas Evening

2009-11-27T17:06:00.001Z

Christmas is only 4 weeks away!
I’m not sure how that happened either. But artisan & vine has a few solutions to help make your Holiday Season a success. artisan & vine stocks a range of elegant wine gift sets, packaging and gift certificates for wine tasting sessions. We also have a range of mixed cases and value priced wines to use during your Christmas entertaining. The full range of Christmas products is available at the bar or via our online shop at http://www.artisanandvine.com/store.

St John’s Hill Christmas Evening
Thursday 17 December from 4pm onward, St John’s Hill goes festive. A range of the businesses on the Hill will be involved and treats will include: Carol singers, Mulled wine & roasted chestnuts, mulled cider & hot Christmas pudding, port & stilton, mince pies, Reindeer racing, Face painting, Live music and Santa's grotto.
Some of the Traders will have stalls out the front of their venue, others will be snuggled inside for you to come visit. It promises to be as special as the Street Festival we held in September, with lots of community Christmas spirit!

Wine Unearthed One Day Wine Courses

2009-11-13T13:55:00.002Z

WINE UNEARTHED AT ARTISAN & VINE
· Wonderful joy – from January 2010, we’ll be hosting one day wine workshops at artisan & vine, run by our very good friends at Wine Unearthed.
· Wine Unearthed have been running wine workshops across the UK for over five years. When it came time for them to start running their acclaimed courses in London, they fell in love with the beautiful artisan & vine venue & away we were!
· Check out their range of 2010 London dates at: http://www.wineunearthed.co.uk/London.html

Christmas gift ideas from artisan & vine available for delivery all over the UK!

2009-11-06T10:30:00.001Z

CHRISTMAS GIFTS – LARGE RANGE AVAILABLE ONLINE NOW!
· Elegant and classy wooden gift boxes, wicker hampers and matched glass wine gift sets
· Gift certificates and wine tasting gift vouchers
· Delivery available all across the UK; or you can pick up items from the bar
· Delivery is FREE for orders above £70 and for all gift certificates; delivery is £8 for orders under £70 – less than the price of parking & public transport can often be & none of the hassle!
· Check out our online shop NOW at http://www.artisanandvine.com/store you’re certain to find perfect gifts for lovers or learners of wine!

CHRISTMAS PARTY BOOKING AT ARTISAN&VINE
· Booking space at artisan&vine is ALWAYS FREE! For Engagements, Birthdays, Farewells or Christmas, we have no booking fees at artisan&vine.
· For Christmas 2009, we’ve teamed up with our very good friends from across the road, the multi award winning Fish Club.
· The boys behind the Fish Club have a resume that extends well beyond the oceans & have recently launched The Catering Club – which will be working in partnership with artisan&vine to bring you the most exceptional food, wine & venue experience for your Christmas, Engagement, Birthday or other party!
· We’ve developed fixed price menu options of £10/person, £15/person and £20/person.
· Menus include delicacies like: Rare roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, watercress and horseradish; Slow roasted tomato risotto balls stuffed with buffalo mozzarella and pesto; Yellow Fin tuna sashimi with soy dressing and Home cured duck ham with celeriac remoulade.
· Full details online here -> http://www.artisanandvine.com/Christmas-party-venue

Chef Quest

2009-11-03T22:36:00.004Z

Are you a creative chef with professional experience and aspirations to realise your potential but unable to get the right venue or financing for your own restaurant?

Come talk with me.

I own artisan&vine, widely regarded as one of London’s Best Wine Bars, and wanting a hot food menu to match the quality of wine we serve.

I'm looking for an ambitious & creative chef with ideas that will maximise the potential of my small kitchen! It’s a kitchen ready for more action - you will need to work with 4 hot plates and 1 oven. That is all. We offer high end clientele & large existing customer base. You'll need to be able to cook for around 30 covers a night, initially on your own, as well significant party catering (essential to making this business work). I’d like to add a hot food menu of around 4 starters, 4 mains and a few desserts, some great sharing plates.

If you have what it takes, you will be on a high risk-reward arrangement; potentially some kind of partnership. Full control of kitchen management will be yours.

Interested in running your own kitchen? Interested in taking your first steps toward entrepreneurism? Interested in being a part of a creative, energetic team & making your name at an already well respected business? Then send your CV and introductory letter to Kathryn@artisanandvine.com. I’m looking forward to possibly working together & I’m open to discussing a wide range of business options.

Please Note: I will only look at CV’s from people who have experience of working in a commercial bar or restaurant kitchen. I will be following up on references and if you are invited to bounce ideas together – please be ready to present some preliminary menu ideas. You will be responsible for the kitchen’s Gross Profit, indeed, it’s what your personal income will depend upon, and you’ll also be responsible for ordering, supplier management and health & safety. Prior experience is essential.

For further information on artisan&vine, please check out our website, you’ll need to be a good personal fit for us to really succeed together! http://www.artisanandvine.com/

artisan & vine UK exclusives

2009-10-23T12:50:00.002+01:00

This week: two new artisan & vine UK exclusives: the new wines from Chateau La Coste & biodynamic Beaujolais from Bret Brothers.

UK EXCLUSIVE 1: MEET THE WINE MAKER: MATTHIEU COSSE, 28 OCTOBER
· A wonderful opportunity to enjoy a tutored wine tasting with renowned French wine maker, Matthieu Cosse as he introduces the new natural wines from the highly esteemed Chateau La Coste.
· THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THESE NEW WINES WILL BE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC IN THE UK!
· Matthieu works across two vineyards: Chateau La Coste in Provence and Domaine Cosse Massioneuve in Cahors so we’re going to taste a range of very interesting wines.
· Tickets are £20/person to taste 5 incredibly delicious wines. We start at 8pm, finishing around 9:30pm.
· Places are limited! Book now to be a part of this very special experience -> http://bit.ly/12z8K6 .

UK EXCLUSIVE 2: A NEW NATURAL BEAUJOLAIS
· The exquisite Bret Brothers vineyards and winery in Burgundy are close to being the subject of legend. The World Atlas of Wine (6th ed by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson) notes that the Bret Brothers have “established a dazzling reputation”.
· Now the Bret boys have extended South of their Macon home to the fresh soils of Beaujolais.
· ARTISAN & VINE IS THE ONLY PLACE YOU CAN BUY BRET BROTHERS BEAUJOLAIS IN THE UK.
· I brought it over having tasted it with the Bret Brothers when I was in Burgundy in June. I became obsessed & had to share it. It is definitely the most powerful Beaujolais I’ve ever tasted.
· Buy it in the bar or have it delivered to your home, though there are extremely limited stocks – only 12 bottles here in the UK!
· Tasting notes here and shop -> http://bit.ly/2R6DlZ

Image: Matthieu Cosse shows me the impressive new winery equipment at Chateau La Coste, Provence.

Hocktoberfest 2009

2009-10-16T13:05:00.002+01:00

HOCKTOBERFEST – GERMAN WINES COME TO ARTISAN&VINE!
· You may have noticed that for a long time, artisan&vine had no German wines on the wine list. As late as yesterday this was true.
· Apparently, somewhere between Blue Nun and Leibfraumilch, the English decided German wines were awful and so although Germany does produce a good number of biodynamic wines, they just weren’t making it over to our shores.
· Once again, I sacrificed myself & drank lots of wine in obscure places, trying to find some nice German biodynamics for us.
· I came, I drank, I bought. I didn’t fall over. I thought: we must create Hocktoberfest!!
· We’re starting small: 4 German Rieslings are now on the list, check them out here -> http://bit.ly/35alPs
· They’re spectacular, & they mark the launch of Hocktoberfest – artisan & vine’s new celebration of wines from our cold climate friends.
· Best do some practicing before you come to the bar to try these, say it now: “German wine is delicious, I love Hocktoberfest!”

Image: German wines are so (tragically) new to artisan & vine I don't even have a picture of a German wine I stock to share with you! This is a photo of (a stunning) Alsace Riesling!!

Time Out London Best Wine Bars

2009-10-09T13:46:00.002+01:00

LONDON’S BEST WINE BARS FOR WINE TASTING, TAKE HOME WINE AND NATURAL WINE – ARTISAN&VINE IS THERE!
· Time Out have recently published their iconic Eating & Drinking Guide for 2010.
· We were stoked to be included in their “Best Wine Bars List” for Best Wine Bars for: Wine Tasting, Take Home Wine and Natural Wine.
· We were also delighted that Time Out’s review of 2009 stated that "the biggest new story this year has been the growth of the 'natural' wine bar" and that in 2008, "the capital sees the opening of its first wine bar to specialise in organic and biodynamically produced wines, Artisan & Vine"
· Excerpts from the classic annual here.

Camel Valley Vineyard Visit

2009-10-02T14:02:00.005+01:00

· FINALLY, a week end or so ago I got to visit my chatty friend, wine maker Sam Lindo, in Camel Valley Vineyards, Cornwall.
· Camel Valley Vineyards have been winning all sorts of awards of late – including Best UK Wine Maker for Sam!
· The scenery is stunning, well worth a visit if you’re ever out holidaying in Cornwall.
· Best of all, the wines are great! I walked away with 5 of their cuvees, which we now stock at the bar & online shop – Bacchus Dry, Rose, Cornwall Brut, Sparkling Rose and SPARKLING RED!
· Check out more pics and story here.
· Ps – yes… I’m well aware I’ve broken the rules… this IS NOT within 2hour drive of Battersea… taste it to see why I made an exception!

Image: Sam shows me his award winning vineyards - note the steep slope - great for drainage!

Launch of our new online wine shop

2009-09-25T12:17:00.003+01:00

· New artisan&vine online wine shop is now live!
· Our full range of wines is available to buy online, with detailed descriptions, producer profiles and style driven recommendations.
· Delivery to your home, office or friends is FREE for orders over £70 and £8 for orders of £70 and under.
· You can also read up and buy the wines you’d like for collection at the bar, for any order value.
· Really fantastic for gifts, hosting parties, or building your own enviable collection of local and natural wines.
· Click www.artisanandvine.com/store to start your shopping experience!

Provence and Southern Rhone trip

2009-09-11T12:04:00.007+01:00

· Last week we went out to Provence and the Southern Rhone to catch up with some of my favourite wine makers and sample some of their latest release vintages.
· In Southern Rhone we visited Chateauneuf du Pape and Cote du Rhone – both home to some sumptuous and rich red wines.
· In Provence we tasted some surprisingly fresh white wines that contrasted some broody, deep red wines. In general, these were blended rather than single grape variety wines.
· Once again I came back with a shopping list that will make my accountant do an accountant’s version of scream (a little too subdued to really be called a scream but you get the idea).
· See photos and short notes from the trip by clicking here.

Image: no matter what I do, I can't get this picture of Henri Milan showing me his ultra-healthy vineyards in Provence to sit straight. I think it's somehow reflective of the fabulous alternative views Henri has of the world...

Wine tasting at artisan&vine

2009-08-22T09:03:00.003+01:00

We have about 100 wines on the list at artisan&vine. Some of the wines are very hard to find elsewhere - orange wines, zero added sulphite wines, even English wines can be hard to find in London.

Thus far I've taken a very informal approach to sharing our wines with the world. If you've been to one of our wine tastings in the past, you'll know it can be a rather fluid affair. (I hope you appreciate that I HAD to slip that in).

Well - these days we're getting a little more thematic about things. We're still doing weekly Wednesday wine tastings, but now we're hosting specific themes, with a bit more structure & advice around what we're serving.

The schedule of upcoming themes is listed here -> http://artisanandvine.com/Wine-tasting

Please do come by for a visit to try some of our more unusual wines, I reckon you won't be disappointed.

Image: mmm... Corsican rose... perfect in every way! Exactly the sort of thing it's worth getting into on a tasting.

New Real Ale and Kentish Cider

2009-08-18T11:01:00.004+01:00

Due to popular demand... we’ve tasted around and selected some artisan finds we hope you’ll love as much as us!
REAL ALE: Duncan Sambrook’s full, fruity and (at least when I pour it) frothy Wandle Ale
KENTISH CIDER: from our long time friends at Biddenden Vineyards - & Cider Works! Straight from the cask at a stonking 8.4% abv!

Wild wine in Chobham Common

2009-08-17T20:56:00.003+01:00

I like the idea of "wild" whatever it's format. There's an inference of "place" within the word: if something occurs "wild" then it is likely to be a natural product of a given "place". And we already know I'm obsessed with place.

Sunday was my day off and Andrew (who's day job is working for Natural England (http://www.naturalengland.gov.uk/) and I were both keen to go somewhere Wild, though it had to be somewhere close.

The wonderful conclusion is a stunning place called Chobham Common, just off the M3 it took us around 30minutes to drive there. It's an area of outstanding beauty, especially at this time of year when the heather is in full flower.

We set up picnic and watched the clouds roll over the heaths. Stunning.

What to drink? The warm day called for a refreshing drink so we opted for the Coteaux du Languedoc 2008 from my beloved Mas Nicot. The wine has fresh lime notes and is starting to develop that brilliant creamy finish that was so characteristic of the 2007 vintage. We sell Coteaux du Languedoc for £4.40/glass, or, you can buy it to take home for £14.50/bottle (and an additional 10% off when you buy 6 or more).

Image: fresh Coteaux du Languedoc from Mas Nicot in the gorgeous wild flowers of Chobham Common.

Ale / Lager, Pilsner / Beer, Rioja / Riocka

2009-08-15T18:38:00.004+01:00

Last year I underwent an awakening: people like draught beer.

This year, I discovered that while some people like draught lager, others prefer draught ale.

I only served draught lager.

So yesterday I went to visit Duncan Sambrook, of Sambrooks Brewery around the corner from me here in Battersea.

My questions made him pull the face I have to pull when people ask for an Australian Rioja (rioja is their favourite grape). He was confused at my questions, but eager to help.

What did I learn? For starters... here are the answers to some important beer basics:

1. Beer = an alcoholic drink made by the brewing & fermenting of starches

2. Lager = fermenting at cold temps, with "fizz" added afterward

3. Pilsner = a type of pale lager, with predominant hop characteristics

4. Ale = fermented at hot temps, with "fizz" developed during secondary fermentatin (yes, like champagne!)

For seconders, I learnt we really need to be stocking some of this full, flavoursome ale stuff...

At artisan&vine we currently have pilsner & lager on tap... we're now trialling Duncan's excellent local ale by the bottle.

Come by & cast a vote... we're keen for your thoughts!

Image: Duncan's fantastic Wandle Ale... I reckon we're onto a winner...

We've gone crackers... (past tense?)

2009-08-12T15:12:00.002+01:00

A friend of mine has a friend, Miriam. Miriam is a foodie. She went crackers long before we did.

Today Miriam brought in a range of her handmade crackers - chilli cheese, herb & cheese, rosemary & garlic. We tasted; they're perfect for wine.

We'll be stocking them from Friday on... come by for a taste of additive free, home made perfection!

PS - yes, Miriam was subject to the standard artisan&vine new supplier interview:

1. show us your product, how does it taste?

2. what's your story? (subtext: where's your passion)

3. what's the story of the product? (tastes like inspiration)

4. what does it cost? will it represent great value for our savvy customers?

Image: homemade crackers!

Wine shop or not shop

2009-08-11T12:59:00.009+01:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about the artisan&vine wine shop.
I've been thinking: people seem to really love our wines, but they rarely buy them to take home. Customers enthuse about what they taste at artisan&vine in a way people don't usually enthuse at bars and restaurants. These wines seem to create an interactive, participatory experience.
So, why then, do we sell such a small amount of wine to take home?
The prices are very competitive, of that I'm certain.
Maybe tasting wine at artisan&vine is a participatory experience that includes the feel of our little bar on St John's Hill.
Most likely, I've done a very bad job telling people that there is the ability to take wines home. It's easy to get caught up talking only about the wines and the exciting places they've evolved from.
Should we have a sign? An accompanying online shop? Do we give up on retail and accept we'll always be primarily a bar?
Come visit us soon... I'm sure we'll have dreamt up something in the very near future.
Share your opinion by voting in the poll on this site (until 30 Aug 09).

Image: sometimes I wonder if our pretty little Georgian building looks more like a home than a bar or shop!

Bordeaux, Cahors and Gaillac

2009-08-04T12:18:00.005+01:00

This July we did a rather ambitious road trip from Toulouse, up to Bordeaux, back down south to Cahors and then across to Gaillac. We were in pursuit of wine: exciting new wine.
· Bordeaux posed the largest challenge for me. Steeped in tradition, amongst all of my contacts we could think of only 3 producers using biodynamic methods. In a fascinating twist, one of them – Pascal Amoreau of Chateau Le Puy - is an extreme natural wine maker, and doesn’t use any added sulphites in his wines. The result is outstanding: full fruit flavours, incredible depth, a live personality. I hope to be stocking the wines come Autumn!
· We went to Cahors to visit the charismatic Catherine Maisonneuve of Domaine Cosse Maisonneuve. Cahors has stunning countryside: wild vegetation interspersed by picturesque towns and their churches. Like much of Cahors, the speciality here is Malbec and we were treated to an amazing tasting across vintages and parcels. We stock Catherine’s full, earthy Le Combal 2005 at artisan&vine – definitely worth drinking if you enjoy your reds heavy.
· Lastly, we visited Virginie Maignien and Patrice Lescarret of Domaine Causse Marines in Gaillac. This place is lively, floral, spicy and the wines are exactly the same. Virginie and Patrice are dedicated to using lesser known grape varieties that are indigenous to Gaillac – Ondenc, Braucol, Duras – it’s a wonderful taste exploration that necessitates(!) me carrying four of their fabulous wines at artisan&vine.
· Photos and notes from the full journey and tastings here -> http://artisanandvine.com/index.php?mact=Album,m3,default,1&m3albumid=14&m3returnid=56&page=56

Image: me with Dominic from Chateau le Queyroux, Bordeaux

London's Best Wine Bar, Burgundy & 1 Year B'day Bash

2009-06-26T12:35:00.005+01:00

In this update – amazing reviews, a one year birthday party, a new wine list and my latest love… Burgundy Burgundy

LONDON’S BEST WINE BAR
Regulars and enthusiasts have thought it for some time… we’re stoked someone other than my Mum put it into writing. This last week wine writer Andrew Barrow of Spittoon.biz and Guardian Word of Mouth wrote a&v up as ‘London’s Best Wine Bar’, full review here -> http://artisanandvine.com/index.php?page=Reviews#Spittoon
We were delighted to receive a flattering write up from wine blogger Robert McIntosh of Wine Conversation also. Robert concludes that passion and commitment, more than the nuances of “natural” are key in making a great wine experience -> http://artisanandvine.com/index.php?page=Reviews#Conversation

BURGUNDY BURGUNDY… CAN I LOVE THEE MORE?
Burgundy... I cannot love thee more. It’s as true as everyone says: this is the place where terroir becomes a fact. Acres upon acres of (almost) only Chardonnay and Pinot Noir with nothing to distinguish what pours from a bottle except the terroir and winemaker themselves... which turn out to be everything!
As a result of the trip, I have quite a few new finds in the bar, new favourites from Domaine D’Arlot, Bret Brothers and Les Héritiers du Comte Lafon.
Photo diary of the trip is here -> http://artisanandvine.com/index.php?mact=Album,m3,default,1&m3albumid=12&m3returnid=56&page=56

OUR NEW WINE LIST – which includes exciting new finds from Chile, Austria, Burgundy & rest of France is here -> http://artisanandvine.com/uploads/pdfs/Full%20wine%20list%20090622%20bar.pdf

ARTISAN&VINE’S ONE YEAR BIRTHDAY BASH!
Somehow a year has passed and as a dedicated member of the a&v mailing list... we’d like to invite you to our 1 year birthday party on Friday, 24 July. The party will start at 6pm and go through to close at 2am. The party is for regulars and enthusiasts – to thank you for your support over the last year. Look forward to seeing you then!

Image: Olivier of Domaine D'Arlot, Burgundy, walks me through the beautiful estate gardens

Plumpton College visit and the week that was

2008-12-04T11:35:00.005Z

I chose to begin December with a treat and so on Monday just gone I packed up my mini little car and drove down to Plumpton College Vineyard & Winery, near Brighton. I really underestimated just how much of a treat this would be! Matthew and Peter did a wonderful job showing me around their scenic vineyard and state of the art winery. (unfortunately I forgot my camera and Plumpton's website is tragically low on photos so the little snippet below is as best I can do for now).

The real pleasure of a College winery, I came to discover, is the opportunity for experimentation, thought and analysis. Peter Morgan, the winemaker at Plumpton, has a pedigree from France and Nyetimber (UK), and his passion for exploring elements of wine making is obvious. Plumpton has a variety of vats, temperature controlled rooms and laboratories within which students can investigate different cause and effecting wine making. If artisan&vine ever feels like giving me a full day off, I’ll be down at Plumpton signed up for study immediately!

Plumpton College runs a variety of long and short term courses – including one day classes – and is definitely worth checking out. Artisan&vine will be running a day trip down there when the sun comes out again next year.

Plumpton’s wines? If you’ve been to artisan&vine, there’s a very strong chance you’ve heard me rave about The Dean NV sparkling wines. We stock The Dean white and Blush. Fantastic complexity, good brioche flavours, always a hit with customers.

In artisan&vine recently: we usually have a number of party bookings on a Saturday night at artisan&vine. This Saturday gone we hosted Christa and Andrew’s engagement party, which we kicked off with a custom wine tasting; the guest’s loved Dominio del Bendito’s 2006 Silver, (£12.50/btl take home) I do too, it’s an extraordinarily velvety red wine, an alcoholic drinking chocolate; it needs to be tasted to be believed. We also hosted Crodelia’s birthday party. Cordelia and her friends converted the entire back of the bar to a dancefloor and before long pretty much the entire bar was back there dancing. Sometimes our 2am licence still just doesn’t seem late enough.

Press and reviews: we were stoked to learn that we had received View London’s highest rating – 5 stars – for our food, wine, ambience and service. Kelly and her editorial team really do a very thorough job in their reviews and as an occasional customer at other bars and restaurants, I was impressed to see the integrity and attention that View London invest for every review and recommendation list they put together. I’m really over the moon that we now feature on a few of their recommended lists, including best places for a first date!

Pictures: I heart Plumpton College and rue forgetting my camera!

New things and newsy things

2008-11-22T15:49:00.005Z

I sometimes wonder if I spend too much of my life trying new things. I’m absolutely obsessive about it. Long ago I used to do something of a “self check” that I’d done at least one new thing a day… I reckon I’m clocking one new thing an hour these days, without even trying.
The addictive thing about trying new things is that 9 out of 10 times the result is positive. When it’s not entirely positive, it’s a learning experience.
Last week I started blogging & I tried updating the blog every day. This is a bad bad bad idea. A terrible idea. Working 16hours a day, on a quiet day, is already enough… Henceforth my blog shall be something like a weekly update during one of our quieter shifts (such as this Saturday afternoon). We’ll try this something new anyways.

So much happened this week I’m not sure where to begin!

We launched our new food menu; this is something we plan to keep fresh by evolving every couple of weeks

We also got some more positive press; this time in the online industry newsletter by Wine+. This latest article is the opposite of an anonymous review: I was asked by the good people of Wine+ to write this one myself! After hearing about some of the interesting things we were doing at artisan&vine, the Wine+ team asked me to write up our experiences. Our online scrapbook includes a snapshot (along with shots of some other nice articles about artisan&vine), click

here for the full article, including fantastic commentary from someone I have massive respect for, Peter McCombie, MW.

Our boiler broke… which is obviously very bad news… though our little fan heaters buzz away in the meantime.

In artisan&vine last night: Melanie, wine buyer for Whole Foods Market came by with a group of friends to enjoy some of our wines. Melanie has outstanding taste & has done a great job at introducing some interesting natural wines at Whole Foods, I was stoked by how much she liked our list – particularly the Grand Cru Rose Champagne (£22.40/bottle take home price) from Marguet. The flavour and complexity of this creamy biodynamic rose blows away that of mass produced commercial champagnes; trying it will change your view on champagne. Self-proclaimed devoted regular Tom, his brother Joe & their friends kept us all entertained, particularly when they inspired the entire late night bar crowd to sing happy birthday to David, another of our favourite regulars. Happy 30th David!

Popular buys last night: the 2005 Peyrouzelles (£10.40/bottle take home price) from Domaine Causse Marines in Gaillac, South-west France, is ever popular and last night was no different. In addition to familiar Syrah, is an interesting blend of indigenous grape varieties - Duras, Braucol and Prunelard. Peyrouzelles displays lovely red berries aromas with peppery & spice character. Beautiful fruit flavours are able to shine without being overpowered by tannins.

Picture: our Wine+ On-Trade Insider article, issued 21 Nov 2008

An Australian girl in Paris & sulphites in wine

2008-11-18T22:01:00.008Z

Artisan&vine has a 2am licence on Friday and Saturday nights, so after a huge Saturday, I crawled into bed at 3:30am. Two hours later I was up and on the way for our Eurostar journey to Paris. Months ago I had booked the getaway. It was the first time I would be away from artisan&vine since it opened; I would miss my 'baby' but I was excited for a holiday! I would be back in London less than 48hours later and I planned on savouring every moment I had!

My main excitement was about visiting some of Paris’ pre-eminent natural wine bars!
It’s almost heartbreaking, how much more abundantly available natural wines are in Paris than London. All three of the bars we visited had over 100 wines with zero added sulphites and maintained very diverse wine lists even with a ‘zero tolerance’ policy. I considered trying to do this back when I was first planning artisan&vine but I just couldn’t find enough variation in the ‘extreme natural wine’ category to rule out anything with any dose of sulphite in it.
Sulphites occur naturally in all living things and are present in small quantities even in unsulphured wines. Many of the natural winemakers we represent at artisan&vine add small doses of sulphites to stabilise a wine at the end of the wine making process. These small doses do little or no damage to the flavour of the wine and can help to protect it from being mishandled. The important principles of creating a wine that is a genuine reflection of the grape variety and terroir from which it comes are maintained. The abundance of natural wines available in Paris - with or without that dose of sulphite - was impressive and mouth watering. It was great to be able to taste some amazing wines that currently aren't available here; I look forward to their hopefully iminent arrival!

In artisan&vine last night: Alex, Marinna and Richard kept things ticking over beautifully!

Popular buys last night: our rotating Happy Hour list came to the fore. On Sunday and Monday the beautiful 2004 Cotes du Rhone “Cuvee des Galets” from Domaine Les Aphillanthes featured. During Happy Hour (5pm-7pm every day) you can buy selected wines to enjoy in the bar at our shop prices. That means customers were enjoying the meaty, gamey flavours of this classic Cotes du Rhone for only £16.50/bottle.

Picture: a holiday was nice but I loved pulling up to that familiar sign again

We're engaged!

2008-11-18T21:30:00.002Z

No, not me... but a lot of other people that come to artisan&vine. It’s certainly our most popular group reservation – almost every Saturday night through to January is booked out with engagement parties. This Saturday gone was the engagement party for Laura and David. Laura and David went all out with their decorations and I loved joining in preparations with them. We had photos of the couple decorate the entire back section of the bar – including photos of Laura and David over the traditional “ladies” and “mens” sign for the bathrooms. I still wish we had a photo of that...

In artisan&vine Saturday night: in addition to the hundred or so people at Laura & David’s party, my lawyer Simon came for dinner and drinks with his brother and father. They loved the Cuvee 41 from Le Clos Perdus that I recommended – it has an outstanding complexity while still being very drinkable; wonderful cured meat flavours with a balanced freshness; it’s one of my favourite wines at the moment (£13.50/bottle to take home). Zoe from Visit London also came by with a friend; I only met Zoe after we were included in their Top 10 wine bars list and I’m stoked she still enjoys coming here.

Popular buys on Saturday night: the 2007 Coteaux Du Languedoc from Mas Nicot found a big following last night and deservedly so. This is a fantastic white wine – beautiful fresh lime flavours ride the wave of creaminess leant by it’s 45% Marsanne composition. Revellers bought several bottles to take home, a steal at only £10.20/bottle.

Picture: I think our fairy lights are partly responsible for our popularity as a romantic destination?

Make mine a triple vodka with cranberry, in a pint glass thanks Sheila

2008-11-15T14:17:00.004Z

Will there come a week when no one orders the unexpected? Last night we had a fun loving group of young lads who were drinking shots of vodka, mixed with various juices, from pint glasses. This was an unanticipated use of my newly acquired pint glasses. Undoubtedly, it is a much more efficient means of drinking your vodka cranberry than going back and forth to the bar all night. After getting to know the boys, I learnt that they were Australians running a construction business. Of course they were, what other pedigree could generate such pragmatism?

In artisan&vine last night: Matt and Jenna had a farewell party before heading back to sunnier shores of Sydney and Caroline had a group of friends join her for drinks before months of travel (sorry guys, we’re not planning on stocking Lambrusco anytime soon J ). My friends Lionel and Mickael brought some more of their French friends along to celebrate Lionel recently being awarded a Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Scholarship – congrats!!

Popular buys last night: other than the triple-shot-pint (shall I add it to the menu?) the 2006 Ortega from Biddenden in Kent had a good run last night. Matt and Jenna’s friends decided they should all sample some English wines while they still had the chance. They were delighted with the result. It’s completely understandable: this Ortega has all of the fruit and flavour that Aussies hope for in our wines, despite it’s cool climate region of growth. An elderflower nose with creamy undertones, we sell this wine for a take home price of £8.60/bottle.

Picture: I thought we had most types of drinks covered... here a lager, prosecco and liqueur

Live jazz, tense anticipation

2008-11-14T12:27:00.008Z

At 6:45pm last night we had a buzzy bar but my heart was in my throat and all I heard was silence. I was waiting for the new sax man. Where was he? He was meant to start playing live at 7pm! I had updated my little A-Board outside and sent out my facebook invite and website calendar update & he wasn't there!

Every Thursday night at artisan&vine we feature live local jazz acts; entry is free. I have a few performers I've really come to like and we use them over & again. I still always want to keep things fresh though so last night I wanted to try a new solo saxaphone player. We've had some 'special' experiences with musicians over the last months and every minute that ticked towards 7pm without a musician made me more & more nervous. You'd think I would have become immune by now but I haven't. I always think: even if this was my 116th night in artisan&vine, I knew from looking around that for a lot of customers in the bar that night, this would be their first experience of the bar... I wanted to make sure it was great.

I ran through the scenarios: 1. he doesn't show at all; 2. he shows and plays awful; 3. he shows and does something inappropriate; 4. anything else? Please don't be able to think of anything worse. (A too easily distracted crevice of my brain remarked the speed with which the human mind can formulate a series of potential tragedies). Why do I try new music? Why do I try? Of course I'd seen his MySpace site but what could I tell from that?!

We sell two more bottles of THAT South African Sauvignon Blanc (yes, it is delicious and unusually tropical for a Sauv Blanc, I love it too!) and a couple of pints of draught beer, hurrah, the new draught beer installation is working!

6:51pm

6:52pm

6:53pm

In walks sax man! Like a mother that finally finds her runaway toddler in a busy supermarket, I'm too happy to see him to be mad he wasn't already there!

What were my worries? Graeme Airth, our new resident sax player, was fantastic! We had rave reviews from everyone there. A great balance of smooth sound with good tempo. Later I discovered that Graeme used to play with "Curiosity Killed the Cat", which Paula was impressed by... sorry... my lack of living in the UK in the 80's has that one a little lost on me... so it appears we had some celebrity in the bar too!

I thought Graeme was wonderful and have booked him again for a fortnight's time. So, if you'd like to enjoy some sure fire excellent live saxaphone at artisan&vine, stop by on Thursday, 27 November. If you want to check out his MySpace site in the meantime, it's: http://www.myspace.com/gripperg

Next Thursday, 20 November, we feature another of my favourite acts at artisan&vine, "Night & Day Jazz", with Amanda doing smooth vocals and Jonathan on keyboard.

In artisan&vine last night: in addition to Graeme and his entourage, an ex-colleague of mine, Rehana, came by with a group of friends. How surreal it was to actually be in the bar we'd been fantasising about just a year ago in the BP staff cafeteria!

Popular buys last night: 2007 Sauvignon Blanc, Reyneke Vineyard, Stellenbosch. Wonderful tropical notes with a crisp, fresh palate. Everything you'd hope from a Sauvignon Blanc and then some. We sell for £12.20/bottle to take home.

Picture: there are few things in life better than sitting on our cozy sofas, drinking sensational wine listening to great live jazz.

New world wine tasting

2008-11-13T08:00:00.005Z

Every Wednesday at artisan&vine we host a themed wine tasting. Last night’s tasting was, rather broadly labelled as, a New World Wine tasting. Here’s one thing about natural wines: it’s rather difficult to find great value new world wines here in the UK (yes – that is a sales invitation for any new world natural wine importers who may be reading).
Last night my friend Mark Neil, of New Generation Wines, was on hand to talk our guests through the five wines on tasting. Of course, before we open to customers at 5pm on a Wednesday, we first conduct an a&v team tasting, so that we can all talk about the wines together (pictured). Here are our notes from yesterday’s 5 wines:

Citrine Chardonnay,Gemtree Vineyards, McLaren Vale, Australia. £11.10 take home.
We all agreed that Chardonnay, particularly new world Chardonnay, gets far too much of a beating these days. This wine is beautifully balanced, has good freshness and lots of high citrus notes. 30% of the grapes used to make this wine spend time in French barriques, the rest are left unoaked for freshness. We thought this was a very flexible wine that could be friendly to a lot of different food dishes.

Viognier 2007, Hans, Marlborough, New Zealand. £19.80 take home.
This is a ridiculously delicious wine. Aromas of dried apricots greet you before the enjoyment of outstanding complexity on the palate. Viognier, unlike Chardonnay, is a really temperamental grape and only leaves growers a small window of time for optimal harvesting. We agreed that Swiss born Hans Herzog got it right with this vintage of Viognier. Lots of tannins and oiliness, which are also characteristic of a good Viognier.

Bloodstone Shiraz 2006, Gemtree Vineyards, McLaren Vale, Australia. £11.90 take home.
We spend quite a lot of time at Gemtree Vineyards from McLaren Vale this Wednesday. It’s a region I really love and after a visit from Eymerik, one of Gemtree’s Directors, a couple of weeks ago, I felt particularly passionate about showing some of his wines. This Shiraz is full of juicy raspberry and red cherry flavours. It’s an extremely approachable Shiraz and one that we often have on our “by the glass” list. There's 3% Viognier included in this primarily Shiraz wine, which gives it some great aromatics.

Uncut Shiraz 2005, Gemtree Vineyards, McLaren Vale, Australia. £15.10 take home.
I really love this dark, black cherry Shiraz. This wine benefits from the indigenous wetland ecosystem and biodynamic treatment that Gemtree are very proud to have made their hallmark. This is a more ‘serious’ Shiraz and wants to be eaten with a good grilled Aussie steak. Dry, tannic, with a strong lingering finish.

Carmenere 2006, Vina von Siebenthal, Aconcagua, Chile. £12.90 take home.
Another Swiss wine maker in the southern hemisphere, this wine is as lush and juicy as you’d hope from a Chilean red. Carmenere, a Bordeaux variety by birth, now only represents around 2% of the planted vineyards in Bordeaux, and has become more synonymous with Chilean wine making. Marinna, our resident Brazilian waitress, loved this wine best; it had all of those jammy blackcurrant flavours of home. This wine isn’t all Carmenere though, there is 10% Cabernet Sauvignon which gives the wine some fantastic green herbaceous notes.

More important than what Team a&v thought is how our guests for the night felt. We had about 25 people join in the wine tasting last night and I think that every wine was a favourite of someone. I toy with the idea of taking tallies on these sorts of things but anecdotal and ‘repeat purchase’ activity suggest that the Viognier and Bloodstone Shiraz were the most popular drinks for the night. I really do love Wednesday nights, it’s great fun to sample a cross section of wines and see the reactions of so many people.

Next Wednesday the wine tasting is themed around “safe bets” for Christmas parties and gifts. We’re going to be showing five wines that have proven mass appeal. Looking forward to it already!

All prices accurate at time of posting.

Picture: Mark Neil joins Paula, Marinna and I in discussing some of our New World Wines.

Christmas wines, tastings and menu at artisan&vine

2008-11-12T13:10:00.006Z

I think that since we first opened in July people have been asking me what we would do for Christmas. We have the fairy lights up all year, so not too much need for additional decoration. In the way of food & wine, here are the answers:

1. Christmas Season menu - £18/person for 2 courses or £25/persons for 3 courses + glass of wine/beer/other: http://artisanandvine.com/uploads/pdfs/Christmas%20menu%20081110.pdf

2. Canapes - which can be booked in advance for any party at £5/person, for 6 canapes/person. These are really popular with all of our party bookings.

3. Christmas mixed case - to buy to take home, we're doing cases of 6 or 12 bottles matched to seasonal foods; we are also happy to make up mixed cases with you.

4. Christmas series wine tasting - every Wednesday night
Turn up anytime between 6pm and 9pm any Wednesday for our fixed price wine tasting with matched food. Each week we show you five wines that match with all of your favourite Christmas foods. Don’t shop blind for your Christmas dinners and parties – know the wine will be perfect! Advance bookings advisable by visiting the bar, calling 020 7228 4997 or emailing welcome@artisanandvine.com. Themed evenings are:
19/11 – Party Safe Bets – these are classic flavours and styles sure to please. Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet, classic port, all your favourites, done in delicate, natural styles. £20/person
26/11 – Parties with Impact – creative wine making styles, unusual grapes – these wines are set to get tongues wagging for days after. Exciting wines with conversation points to match. £20/person
3/12 – Parties for a Steal – this week we present some of our best value wines – all of the quality & authenticity you’d expect from artisan&vine at bargain prices; this week’s tasting is £18/person.
10/12 – Parties with Exuberance – this week we’ve put together a range of our premium wines – pure indulgence in a bottle. This week’s tasting is £30/person.

Picture: interior of artisan&vine; with all of our fairy lights on all year, that cozy Christmas feeling is something we're always happy to have

Why local and natural

2008-11-11T18:42:00.005Z

The question I get asked most often is probably “can I please have a glass of sauvignon blanc?” I confess to being surprised by the popularity of the grape, without doubt, our best selling wine is the 2007 Sauvignon Blanc from Reyneke in Stellenbosch. Another question I get asked a lot is “what does local and natural wine mean?” I’m not surprised by how often I get this question. So, today, as I’ve done all my ordering and payments and accounting, I thought I’d take some time to describe what we mean by “local” and “natural” wines and why I chose to specialise in them. Today’s blog is about the intent of artisan&vine, how I came to love local and natural wines and why I wanted to set up a fun and friendly venue for sharing them.

THE BEST OF INTENTIONS
Mid 2007 I decided that I would definitely open my own wine bar. I wanted to do this because (1) I thought there was an absence of great wine bars where you could taste a broad range of wines in London and (2) I wanted to turn my passion for wine into a career in wine.
One of my favourite things in the world has always been travelling to vineyards and sampling a range of wines together. I have always thought it bizarre that in London you could have almost any experience on earth – we have underwater aquariums, simulated golf ranges, genuinely global cuisine – except simple, accessible, casual wine tasting. The idea at the heart of artisan&vine has always been this: to capture that fabulous vineyard experience where you can taste a variety of wines and learn through tasting. The concept is to bring your taste buds as close to the artisan and the vine as possible, while remaining in a comfortable, accessible environment.
So, from the beginning, a rotating list of flights of wine and a long ‘by the glass’ list would always be on the menu.

FOCUS AND CHOICE – LOCAL ENGLISH WINES
In addition to comparative tasting, something I love about the vineyard experience is the focused expertise of the person conducting the tasting. From the outset I thought it was important for artisan&vine to have a focus to the wines we offered. The first and most obvious choice I made was to stock local English wines.
I’ve travelled a lot and lived in a few different countries. One of my favourite ways of coming to know a country or region is through indulging in the wines of that region. There is no question in my mind that English wines are underexposed in their own, let alone in the global, market. At the same time as local food production in England is enjoying a celebrity chef inspired renaissance, English wines sit on the shelves of local community markets or the homes of wine maker’s relatives; it’s a fascinating contrast.
In order to bring the English wine experience into artisan&vine, I insisted on only working with winemakers who would deal with me directly – no distributors or wholesalers. I visited a wide range of English vineyards and tasted over 300 English wines to come to the 15 or so we have on our list at any one time. English wine making may be in something of an infancy - I view this as an exciting thing. The wines are generally fresh, low alcohol and easy drinking. After nearly four months of serving English wines to our customers I am proud to report a very positive response. Often artisan&vine customers say they are happy simply to be given the option to have a taste of home. The 2007 Bacchus from my friends Bob and Carol of Brightwell Vineyard in Oxfordshire remains one of our best selling wines; the 2007 Pinot Noir that Julian makes at Biddenden Vineyard in Kent is also very popular.

BALANCE AND DISCOVERY – BIODYNAMIC WINES
Still… as I mentioned earlier, English wines are generally very light, young wines. To have a local only wine list would prevent me from serving big belting reds or buttery golden whites.
During this “planning phase” of artisan&vine, I was still working in Corporate Strategy for BP and was attending evening courses at the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET). I was reading a lot of wine literature and press. It took no genius to recognise the word “biodynamic” appearing it a great deal of wine journalism while it was almost completely absent from the formal WSET lectures and text books.
In late 2007 I attended my first biodynamic wine tasting and have never looked back. The tasting was run by Frederic Grappe, who has since become a great friend of mine. We tasted five of his wines that day; among them Le Grand Blanc 2005 from Domaine Milan, Coteaux Du Languedoc L’indigene 2005 from Mas Des Agrunelles and Cahors Le Combal 2005 from Domaine Cosse Maisonneuve, all of which we now list at artisan&vine. I was instantly in love. These wines had such purity of flavour and intensity of character. Nothing needed to fight its way to unleash qualities in my mouth; everything seemed in balance. As good an instructor as Fred is, with only one tasting my knowledge of biodynamic wines was clearly limited. What I knew was that something was different. I equate it to the feeling you have when you taste real cocoa versus mass produced chocolate, or fresh squeezed juice versus that from concentrate, or percolated coffee versus instant. Even if you had no knowledge of how these products were produced, you taste that there is a difference. That is the feeling I first had about biodynamic wines and I have not changed my mind.

DEFINITIONS - NATURAL WINES
Since then I have tasted A LOT of “natural” wines. Yes, I have jumped from the word “biodynamic” to “natural”. Here is where I’d like to call in the need to balance accessibility with precision. We cannot continue to make the subject of wine so elusive or technical that it is inaccessible; this only results in people abandoning enquiry and selecting on price comparative to all alcoholic beverages. Precise information should always be available but detailed description cannot constitute an introduction.
Having tasted a lot of natural wines and met with a lot of winemakers and importers, I find that there exists something like a scale of naturalness. In the interests of accessibility, I have grouped the scale into five levels:
Level 1: alcoholic beverages made primarily from grapes with the addition of various flavour enhancers, such as syrup, wood chips, cultured yeasts, acid, etc; and preservatives such as suphites.
Level 2: alcoholic beverages made primarily from grapes grown in organically farmed vineyards, with added flavour enhancers and preservatives, and using cultured yeasts to aid fermentation.
Level 3: alcoholic beverages made from grapes grown in organic or biodynamic vineyards, with minimal added flavour enhancers and preservatives, and cultured yeasts.
Level 4: alcoholic beverages made from grapes grown in organic or biodynamic vineyards, with only a dose of sulphite at bottling and only indigenous (wild) yeasts for fermentation
Level 5: alcoholic beverages made from grapes grown in organic or biodynamic vineyards, with zero added sulphites, no filtration, no fining and only indigenous (wild) yeasts for fermentation

All of the “natural” wines at artisan&vine fall into Level 4 or 5. Some purists will say only Level 5 type wines deserve to be called “natural” wines. My experience is that people of all levels of wine knowledge can relate to the Level 5 wines being called “extreme natural wines” (in the end, isn’t that why we have words, to be able to relate to one another?) We have around 10-15 extreme natural wines on our list at any one time; they are rather hard to come by and the tastes are often ones that we need to ‘learn’ to appreciate. I have a lot of wines that fall into various permutations between Levels 4 and 5. For example, we sell a lot of wine with no filtration but still a dose of sulphite, etc. The subtleties we can get into here would do nothing to help most people enjoy great wines in a wine bar and for the purposes of exposing people to exciting and unique wines, whatever label we put on them seems academic. For customers who do desire more information, we’re always excited to provide it. I have gone to great lengths to ensure our definition of “natural” wine is readily available.

NATURAL BY ANY OTHER NAME
Before I decided to talk about artisan&vine as specialising in “local and natural wines” I did consider some alternatives to the word ‘natural’. It’s clear that to say artisan&vine specialise in organic or biodynamic wines does not say enough; indeed it says very little for what happens to the wines beyond the vineyard. To say that we specialise in wines that use only indigenous yeasts would be irrelevant to most people and in the extreme definitional case, probably technically inaccurate for the happenstance contamination that can occur in wineries. “Real wine” is a term I’ve seen used a lot in various trade tastings and advertising which does not seem helpful or meaningful at all. Even a Level 1 type wine exists, it is “real”.

We could let the pendulum of accessibility versus precision swing too far the other way too. In practice, without doubt the phrase that sticks in most artisan&vine customers minds is “hangover free” wine. Maybe I attended too many lectures on corporate responsibility over the last 12 years but “London’s first hangover free wine bar” seems to be a tagline that begs for trouble.
Natural is a good word.

PULSE CHECK
I’m delighted to say that although we are still extremely young as a wine bar, so far we seem to be achieving our original intent at artisan&vine. We’ve created a comfortable, friendly environment where it’s easy to taste a lot of wines that are locally or naturally produced. We have people who come in and love the jazz music and sofas and service and will leave and be back each week without knowing they are drinking natural wine; they know they are drinking delicious wine. We have others who religiously attend every Wednesday evening wine tasting we have, thirsty for more knowledge and experience of natural wines. One of my biggest thrills is hearing regular customers explain the principles of biodynamics to a friend they are introducing to the bar; it’s an exciting place to be.

London is a fantastic place. You can have almost any experience in the world here – we have vodka bars, beer halls, Mexican cantinas and French brasseries – now we also have a bar that specialises in local and natural wines, and I think that’s pretty cool. So, here’s a toast: to choice and taste and the experience and enjoyment of life, naturally.

Picture: flights of wine at artisan&vine vary daily.

I heart artisan&vine, Londoners heart draught beer

2008-11-10T14:20:00.003Z

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