I wanted to save some of my review for Hotel du Vin to outside of the Yelp event that I attended recently. It first caught my eye with the window display of wine casks that made me what to squash my nose up against the window in an alcohol-induced frenzy, but I was with people, too sober and too self conscious with a dash of 'how clean are those windows' thrown in to boot. Nonetheless, it had reached my subconscious that I wanted to return. Little did I know that this would be via a Yelp event, but it was a great introduction to a place that I definitely have plans to return to to test out their menu. We were delivered canapes as part of a wine tasting event - if that is the quality, then I won't be disappointed, especially in the cheese stuffed profiteroles... sinfully good. \n\nWe were given a nice little tour of the hotel - the snug, a nice wee place to indulge in a whisky with friends (yup, I can picture long nights of drunken scheming and finagling taking place in here), the restaurant complete with wine theme, and a fantastic overtop bar with a great view of the diners below. For the somewhat closeted geek in me - loved the wine pull (treat wine like beer! Imagine the lockin fun with that!), the seriously over the top wine tasting room with custom built tasting station (and very bad fake stone wall paper). \n\nAnd that brings me to the parts that make me cringe - the fake stone wallpaper took a rather funky tasting room (next door to cellars I would dream of owning) and added a layer of crass. The chandelier made out of nasty looking wine glasses just further contributed... and the mural of Burke and Hare in the function room was just seriously awful. If those were accidentally burned in a freak accident, I wouldn't miss them. That would leave the much better parts of Hotel du Vin, including the super lovely staff (Nan the manageress and Seb... a fantastic speaker, raconteur and sommelier) to do nothing but impress.
places reviews