Realising his dream in 2019, he opened his own place in Homerton in East London. Finally having the freedom to run a wine bar in his own unconventional style, wine tastings have become a solid favourite with customers. Manu’s approach is fun and accessible with none of that wine snobbery. He is an expert at making you feel comfortable and even the most inexperienced novice will come away from the evening with new knowledge.

Wine tastings at Bottle and Blade are bespoke. On enquiry, Manu will discuss what you want from your tasting and create an event tailored to both your taste and budget. A tasting usually consists of three different wines, they can be all of one colour or type of wine, or can be a mix of red, white, orange and rose or even bubbles. We have a range of tasting options; wine only or with food pairing and also fine wine options.

During these covid times, we can accomodate between two to six people, however once things get back to ‘normal’ we can have groups up to ten. We also offer virtual tastings where we create a tasting kit for you to pick up or we can deliver and we perform these via zoom. Costs for virtual tasting are calculated on discussion.

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Life is ever-changing these days with so much uncertainty, whether it’s job security, your personal life or even health. What is constant though, is the joy of making your own bread – and nothing makes your home smell quite so welcoming and cosy as a fresh loaf straight out of the oven.

A few months after we opened, Kate began hosting sourdough bread-making workshops to share her love of home baking. She’s been baking her own sourdough bread for about six years when a friend taught her first the traditional 4-day preparation, and subsequently an easier 24-hour preparation. The first method is great but requires a lot of planning ahead and time management. The 24-hour preparation was a game changer and better suits our busy lifestyles. It’s this method which Kate teaches here at Bottle and Blade.

With the world in crisis for most of 2020, sourdough bread making has made it into the top 5 of lockdown activities. If you haven’t already done so, learn to make bread, it will spruce up your kitchen repertoire, while away the hours and give you a great sense of achievement… every time.

The workshop runs for around 4 hours, so to provide enough time for the various stages of sourdough making, you’ll jump right into mixing your dough. There are half-hour resting intervals for the dough and during these intervals Kate will explain all you need to know about how to create the best loaf of bread. She will have prepared a dough in advance so you can see the how your dough should look after proving, how to score your loaf and the oven-baking process. Halfway through the class you will get to taste the fresh baked bread with various toppings as you take a break with a glass of wine.

On completion, you’ll have a ready-to-bake dough to take home with you to bake in your home that night or the next morning.

We now also offer bread workshops simultaneously with a wine tasting, our resident wine guy Manu talking you through each wine while your dough rests.

Workshops are usually held on Sunday afternoons and cost £90, with wine tasting £115, and you will even get some essential tools to take with you, as well as a portion of starter for your next loaf. All you need to bring is a tea towel and a bag to carry home your dough.

Look at our Instagram page for upcoming events or book your own private class with your friends. Message us there or email at bottleandblade@gmail.com

It’s been just over a year since Bottle and Blade opened its doors and well, it’s been real to say the least. So much has happened and yet it only seemed like yesterday we were sanding walls, painting and fumbling around trying to align wallpaper patterns. And that is probably in part due to having to open a second time, our ‘déjà-vu reopening’ post-lockdown just two months ago.

Who would have thought that only seven months into our business we would have to close our doors for four whole months due to a global pandemic? It’s the stuff of apocalypse films and doomsday predictions. We are still here though and aren’t planning on going anywhere.

In late June last year we fell into the opportunity to open our own wine bar (you can read about that in our first blog, Our Story), a long hoped for dream of Manu’s. Six weeks later on August 20 we opened our doors to the public. We couldn’t quite believe it ourselves when only weeks before we were considering leaving London for a new life elsewhere.

Opening in August is not always the cleverest move as London is pretty empty while most of the population is off on holidays away from the sticky heat of the city, and without having an outside seating area to attract punters for a sunset drink, it was a gamble. But this was what it was and it gave us some breathing space to find our feet and get to know our audience without being caught understaffed and overwhelmed.

Over the coming months we sourced our food and drink suppliers ( Les Caves de Pyrenee, New Generation Wines, Iberian Drinks, Portuguese Story, East London Liquor Company, Forest Road Brewery and A Portuguese Love Affair),  attended many wine tastings – somebody has to do it! – and came up with our dynamic selection of wine which changes from week to week depending on what Manu fancies and to avoid our customers getting bored with the same juice every time. Our wines which start from £12 and go up to around £50, are a mix of classic and natural wines, although mostly leaning towards the natural side; partly because Manu favours it, but also as low intervention, vegan, organic and skin-contact orange wines are more and more in demand.

Having been a sourdough bread baker for a few years, we decided that I should bake all the bread for the daily bar menu, to offer something more unique and homely. Due to its popularity, I started teaching sourdough workshops giving bread enthusiasts the skills they need to prepare and bake their own loaves at home.

Manu began hosting monthly wine tastings which our customers loved. His passion and knowledge are imparted in a fun way without any of the snobbery so many are intimidated by. We planned to continue with organised regular wine tastings as well as bespoke private tastings with a more personal touch for the customer.

With so many ideas and plans taking shape – including hosting regular live music nights after acquiring our very own piano – we were gutted that after only three bread workshops, three wine tastings and two music nights, we had to close the bar indefinitely due to Covid-19 lockdown. We didn’t even get started on the food pop-ups! Like many others, we thought it would be maybe a month, six weeks max, and things would get back to normal. We never dreamed it would be almost four months.

We needed a game plan; rent and suppliers still needed to be paid, so Manu started doing home deliveries on his bike. With many people self-isolating in those early days, others on full salary and working from home, wine was a much-needed commodity. Manu spend those first few weeks cycling all over Hackney bringing wine to our customers doors. Some deliveries were surprise gifts for loved ones and they were the most fun to do, bringing joy to people during such weird times was a pleasure.

A few weeks in we opened the shutters again, to operate as a takeaway wine shop for a few hours, four days a week. We were very lucky to be able to keep business running, albeit in a reduced capacity. Keeping the doors open allowed us to keep Bottle and Blade alive and kicking as well as giving us a purpose for those few months.

We knew that starting our own business would come with its challenges and hurdles, but wow, 2020 has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride – and although difficult at times, we’ve loved every minute of it.

If you’re looking for a rosé to drink this summer, then look no further. La Mascaronne 2019 Quat’Saisons Rosé, produced in the holy land of rosé – the Cotes de Provence appellation in France – is pale in colour, yet its flavour is deceptively intense. With notes of peach and strawberry and a citrus twist on the nose, it’s incredibly refreshing in the mouth with a floral and long, clean finish.

Made from hand-harvested grapes, it has earned certified organic status. It is the perfect Provence blend of Grenache and Cinsault, grown in a unique and dramatic rocky terroir. La Mascaronne wines are made exclusively from grapes grown in their own vineyards, and although they produce a range of red, white and rosé wines, it is the Quat’Saisons for which it is most famous.

This time three years ago I had the pleasure to visit Chateau Mascaronne in the hills outside the medieval village of Le Luc with a group of fellow sommeliers organised by my friend and colleague Andy Muscat from New Generation Wines. We stayed in the chateau itself, the residence of owner Tom Bove, American engineer and businessman-turned-wine producer.

Bove is the previous owner of neighbouring Chateau Miraval, an 18th century manor, where he replanted grapevines and had the vineyard converted to organic farming. He subsequently sold Miraval to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie for $60 million in 2012, where rosé is still produced, but he retained the La Mascaronne vineyard, producing in my view, one of the best rosé around.

That weekend we all stayed in the 19th century chateau, which sits northwest of coastal St Tropez. The location is absolutely stunning, set amongst rolling hills of grapevines and oak forests. My room boasted a view of those hills and the vineyard, and the bathroom was bigger than my one-bedroom flat in London.

It wasn’t only the view that was notable. My room was adorned with original fine art on the walls, even the bathroom had an interesting piece placed above the toilet. A rather abstract and almost child-like drawing of a rhinoceros, it caught my eye, and on further inspection of the signature in the bottom corner, discovered it was an original Salvador Dalí! The art and décor of the chateau followed in this vein throughout, impressive yet not ostentatious, a mix of classic and modern style.

These wine trips always start with tasting of the whole range of wines produced, and this was no different. Our host Tom took our palates on a journey in the ground floor of his chateau, enthusiastically talking us through each wine and regaling us with many anecdotes of his most interesting life – how he came to be making wine with his Italian grandfather in a basement in New York after working in the Navy’s nuclear submarine programme.

The day which followed, I sat in the passenger seat of Tom’s Range Rover – preferential treatment due to my being Italian – while we drove around the vineyard, Tom explaining the production process, and how he had upgraded his landscape to better suit the wines’ needs, reshaping hillsides for better exposure. He explained that the rocky nature of the terroir creates more work for the producers, but is worth it for the magnificent resulting wines.

That night we had dinner with the family, three enormous steaks on the barbecue with a quantity and quality of wine to die for. After dinner, Tom presented a bottle of Barrique Grappa on the table, left us to it and wisely went to bed. Any kind of good alcohol doesn’t last too long on a table of six sommeliers and we of course smashed this bottle by the end of the night. There were a lot of sore heads the next morning, all but Tom; fresh as a daisy and buzzing around the vineyard like a teenager.

Ever since then I have hailed La Mascaronne as the ultimate rosé. The bottle is sexy with its glass cork, the colour is sublime and… well, taste it for yourself to find out more.

La Mascaronne is available at Bottle and Blade to take away and of course when we are able to open as a fully functioning bar again, will be available by the glass and bottle to drink in-house.