Bristol Wine & Food Fair

The  weather was on our side and made the day at the Bristol Wine & Food Fair a very pleasant one. To start we wandered aimlessly through the food area, looking here, trying something there and found we very quickly run out of things to look at. So we went again, this time more organised, from stall to stall, tried and talked to the promoters, even bought the odd chunk of cheese before we went into the serious task of wine drinking. In marquee A we did not find anything new and interesting so quickly into B. And there we discovered a small stall promoting Georgian wine (the Georgia round the Caucasian mountains). Not only was that a pleasant, surprising discovery –we did not know they made wine- but also a fun one, the staff was extremely passionate about their wines and the wines were very good. So good, that we bought rather a lot of it. We had a wonderful lunch in the “restaurant” supplied by the Real Olive Co., fantastic tapas, very reasonable price, very enjoyable.

All in all we spent a couple of hours at the fair and we did enjoy our time. But on the other hand we were quite disappointed with it. The food part was small and did not show us anything new –just the usual suspects you can find on any old food market or fair. And the same for the wine: apart from the aforementioned and a couple of others it was just a show case for Bristolian wine merchants we all know and occasionally frequent anyway.

It being a specialised fair we expected unknown wines from new vineyards, different foods from hopefully local producers – instead it was just another food and wine fair with all the known shops and producers (apart from a very few).

We liked what we bought but we did expect to come home broke and laden with goodies. We didn’t, because most of the things on offer we can get anytime in Bristol or Bath.