Willy's Wine Bar - Review

Another excellent Wine on Wednesday last night.  A good sized group of 8 descended on Willy’s Wine Bar on Fenchurch St, unfortunately by the time I got there at 7, the keen beans were closing in on the end of the second bottle which I had a taste of, an easy drinking Cotes du Rhone.

An early ominous sign was that the place was pretty deserted, however, the size of the wine list more than made up for the lack of patrons.  Split into grape varieties rather than just reds and whites made choosing simple and their monthly discover series highlighting Californian wines prompted me to try the De Loach Zinfandel which I can highly recommend.

Our staple crowd favourite Malbec also got a run as we tried the La Puerta and Tapiz offerings.  Kev mixed it up in the middle with a 3 Stones Sauvignon Blanc.

All-in-all an enjoyable evening in a comfortable surrounding.  The only downside was that they don’t do food in the evening so when we finished up we were all pretty starving.

Planet of the Grapes - Review

Well, it's about time I wrote up our visit to the fantastically named Planet of the Grapes.

Due to the late notice about this event, it was just the three of us who made it along but that didn't detract from a great night of interesting and enjoyable wine and conversation.

The wine bar had a large selection of wines to choose from and rather than have a wine list, you chose wines off the shelf similar to shopping, with an additional £10 corkage fee to drink in house.  This is a great concept and would suit perfectly if you wanted to have a meal and enjoy it with a high end wine.  For us, however, this mark-up made quite an impact on the price of the wines we were trying, typically in the £20-40 range.

Not deterred, we sampled a few of their wares, including a delicious Argentinean Shiraz, Malbec and finishing with the safe option of the Chocoloate Block by Boekenhoutskloof.

Overall we had an enjoyable evening, and my thanks go out to Sammy and Troy for coming along.