Little London Wine Tour November 2018

Why not have a glass 🍷 at one of three new London wine bars? Unwined in Waterloo, The Drop Wine Bar & Diogenes The Dog are waiting just for you!

At UnscrewMe we’re always looking for new opportunities to taste wine. So naturally, we have an eye on the ever-changing London wine landscape.

As a regular feature, we want to look beyond just tastings and also showcase some interesting, new wine bars and wine shops that are worth a visit. We start this new series today with three excellent additions to the London wine circus.

Unwined in Waterloo, Waterloo, SE1

• Name: Unwined in Waterloo
• Location: SE1, behind Waterloo station. A cute place with a modern, warm and woody look.
• Background: A few years ago, I backed a Kickstarter campaign to open a wine bar in Tooting. The goal was to move from wine tasting pop-ups to a permanent space — this worked fine and whenever I visit, Unwined in Tooting is packed.
  Fast forward, Unwined are opening their second location in Waterloo. The idea remains the same, a combination of wine club, wine shop and wine bar with regularly changing food pop-ups providing smaller and larger plates on a short menu with matching wines.
• Wine Picks:
  2015 Vignet del Vulture “Pipoli” Greco-Fiano by wine producer Valentino Sciotti from Basilicata in Italy 🇮🇹. Made from white Greco & Fiano grapes, somewhat floral and distinct grapefruit notes.
• Tastings: In Tooting, they do weekly tastings on Wednesdays, in Waterloo they want to start doing tastings on Tuesdays in 2019.

The Drop, King’s Cross, N1

• Name: The Drop Wine Bar
• Location: N1, behind King’s Cross station in the new, impressive Coal Drops Yard development. Beautiful stone walls and arches give this place a real wine bar atmosphere.
• Background: The company behind the highly-regarded Barrafina restaurants now also opened a wine bar.
  Full disclosure: Being a crowd investor in the parent company, I’m pleased how well this new place has been set up!
• Wine Picks:
  2016 Coste della Sesia DOC Rosso”Cascina Cottionano” by Colombera & Garella from Piemonte in Italy 🇮🇹. We all enjoyed the enticing cherry notes, a great wine that was recommended to us by the knowledgeable staff, pleasing red and white wine drinkers alike.
• Tastings: We currently don’t know if they are planning to do any regular wine tastings — but you can always go and do your own little tasting!

Diogenes The Dog, Elephant & Castle, SE17

• Name: Diogenes the Dog
• Location: SE17, a short walk from Elephant & Castle.
• Background: This wine bar was recommended to me by my friend Raul before it even opened and the idea of showcasing new, interesting wines immediately sounded like a great concept to me.
  The owner Sunny seeks out uncommon combinations of regions and grapes to make his wine list fun, exciting and unique. Where else could you for example drink a Polish wine made from the hardly known Hibernal grape?!
• Wine Picks:
  Riesling by Poderi Colla from Langhe in Piedmont in Italy 🇮🇹. Not your standard Old World Riesling, lots of grapefruit notes and a typical Riesling nose.
  Ben’s Reserve Pinot Noir by Stapleton & Springer from the South Moravia region in Czechia 🇨🇿. Comes in a surprisingly light colour with a smokey nose, then strong cherry notes, some spice, wood and good acidity.
• Tastings: When I talked to Sunny, he said that they are planning to start regular tastings in 2019.

More London wine bar and restaurant news

It is quite a task to keep up with all the new places opening and all the changes in the London wine world. Fortunately, there are websites like Hot Dinners with their constantly updated list of “New and recently opened London restaurants”.

Their insider knowledge is a great source to remain on top of restaurant news in London. And between all the restaurant and food recommendations, Hot Dinners also covers new wine bars and other hospitality news.

Next up, following the first Wine Highlights a few weeks ago, we will reveal our Wine Highlights for November.

(Not only all the wines above contributed their fair share to this list, but also great coffee from Kaffeine, Clerkenwell Grind, Holy Shot. As did a short visit at TechHub London)