St John’s Hill Community Raffle

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!

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.

Our 2 Year Birthday Party!

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.

Eat Out Manifesto continues on

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.

World Cup at artisan & vine

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

Friends of artisan & vine

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

Happy Hour and my medieval PR skills

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!

An Australian girl in Paris & sulphites in wine

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

Christmas wines, tastings and menu at artisan&vine

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