London – Jason Atherton’s latest restaurant puts the spotlight on wine.
While the Spanish-style tapas is sure to be delicious, the real focus here is on the wine. Using the Coravin system, which means the bar can serve wines by the glass without popping the cork, Social Wine & Tapas has more than 30 wines available by the glass as well as a wine flight offer that enables drinkers to try three varieties of the same grape. What is more, every member of the front-of-house team is a trained sommelier.
‘We wanted to do something a little different with Social Wine & Tapas, and as far as I know this has never been done before,’ Laure Patry, the establishment’s executive sommelier told The Drinks Business.
Wines are offered at a range of prices, from £4 to £26 a glass, but Patry admits that although she tried to keep mark-ups low, the high rents in the Marylebone area did not always make that possible.
The Big Picture: Wine-loving is no longer just for snobs, as more drinkers want to become connoisseurs. To read more on the increasing accessibility of wine, see our microtrend Uncorked Wine.