London Wine Week is an annual event where over 100 wine bars, restaurants and bars across the city give special offers to anyone wearing a London Wine Week wrist band. The offers range from £5 for a flight of 3 wines, to dining specials with wine pairings and 'sip and snacks' - wine with nibbles.
Whilst picking up my wrist band it seemed churlish not to have a quick tipple, so I went over to the Wines from Portugal pop up and had a flight of 3 red wines. The server was very friendly and happy to talk about the wines, and had just done his WSET Level 3.
I started with the Terra D'Alter Reserva Tinto 2013, followed by the Smart Dog Tinto 2015 and finished up with the Casa Ferreirinha Esteva Tinto 2015. The wines were pleasant and well balanced, but didn't pack enough punch for me, particularly with the fantastic wines I had been sampling in Portugal just a couple of weeks ago.
Anyway that was the prelude to the real event which was a couple of nights later.
We started at Davy's in High Holborn as it is close to where I work. You'll know from my other posts that I am a fan of Davy's and they didn't disappoint on the service. The server was knowledgeable and friendly and left the bottles with us so we could take a closer look. Alas it being a Spanish flight, the majority of the labels were in Spanish and whilst I might be able to muddle through in French, it was all Greek/Spanish to me.
The wines were from Aragon (which I can never look at without thinking 'Son of Arathorn'), Navarra and Rioja, with the Rioja being my favourite of the three. Although we actually got a drop of white burgundy from Macon as a freebie, and that was probably my favourite of the lot!
We then took a gentle stroll down to Farringdon and started off at Hix Oyster Bar, where we tried wines from the Loire and Rhone - Muscadet, Coteaux du Layon and Vacqueryos (white, red and sweet). The server talked us through them in a bit of detail, but these weren't really to my taste - I have had much better Rhone wines in the past 2 weeks of my WSET. Still the bar was nice and bright, and not too busy, and one of the servers was very friendly and offered to take our photo.
Next we went off to Vinoteca where we had wines matched with snacks. Our first white was a Gruner Veltliner from Malborough. I got the peach from the tasting notes, but not so much the mandarin, and even less the white pepper. However it went very well with the smoked mackerel pate on toast. Our second glass was a Pinotage from the Western Cape. Rather like Pinot Noir, I find it hard to love a Pinotage...but the food of roasted veg on toasted bread hit the spot. Service was good, but we were given a menu to read about the wines, rather than having them explained to us, so a bit less personal. However this was the busiest of the places we had been so far so I'll forgive them for that...
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| Mackerel pate nearly finished... |
Off to Iberica, apparently a small chain of tapas bars, that I am ashamed to say I have never heard of! Delightful staff, and a great buzzy dining room makes me think I will be back here to try out their tapas. After a short wait we managed to grab a couple of seats at the bar.
Out friendly server (photographed below) took us through our flight of Tempranillo from Ribera del Duero, Valencia and Cigales. As ever, the fuller bodied last red I had to try was my favourite. The server seemed the most passionate about the wines of anyone who served us during the evening.
We then went to Zetter where we were expecting to enjoy the Brexit flight of European wines, but we were made to feel so unwelcome by the staff who were completely disinterested in seating us/speaking to us, that we immediately left. It was a shame as all the other bars had been so welcoming. If this place is on the list next year, I will definitely be giving it a swerve!
Granger and Co restored our faith in the London Wine Week, by being very welcoming and giving us a lovely flight from Woodstock, Mclaren Vale. These were probably my favourite wines of the evening, and only afterwards did I realise we were only supposed to have them if we were dining! So thank you to the staff there for giving them to us anyway along with some meats and olives. They said we were the first people to ask for the flight, which I found strange as this was the 4th night of London Wine Week.
So with the exception of Zetter, it was a great evening, with everyone welcoming us and our wrist bands and generally really wanted to talk about their wines. The wines themselves weren't always to my liking, but it was good practice to see what I could sniff and taste, and I helped give my friend a few tips along the way (and got her drinking red wine nearly all night - a triumph!)
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