Going on the recommendation of my Portuguese colleague, one weekend Mr K and I headed down to V & A Wine Merchants near Jiřího z Poděbrad (not to be confused with the, in my admittedly biased opinion, vastly superior V & R Imports in Karlin) on the - in the event false - premise that they apparently stocked the elusive variety of traditional Portuguese green wine there.
However, our attention was caught on this occasion by a couple of other unusual varieties they did have in stock - namely an assortment of wines from Georgia and Lebanon which, to my (albeit limited) knowledge, aren’t available in any other vinotheky in Prague.
V & A Wine Merchants has an atmospheric seating area alongside its wine shop, where a rotating selection of wines are available to buy by the 0,15 glass.
We first sampled a glass of Lebanese Cave Kouroum Syrah 2003 at 60kč per glass (248kč for a bottle) which, according to the blurb on the label, is made from grapes grown on the vineyards of Bekaa on the slopes of the Barouk mountain at an altitude of 1000m. I’m not very good at waxing lyrical on the subject of wine, so suffice to say that we both found this one pleasantly fruity and spicy, as a good Syrah should be.
We next went for a glass of white Marani Mtsvane from Georgia at 45kč per glass (175kč per bottle) – oddly, no year was stated on the label. This was a dry white wine made from Mtsvane grapes grown in the Kakheti wine region of Georgia, and tasted nicely zesty with a floral bouquet. We both liked it at any rate.
Mr K was feeling peckish, so ordered a couple of cheeses from the selection on offer, the goat’s cheese and the Grès des Vosges at 50kč for the two.
These came beautifully presented with capers and cherry tomato garish and accompanied by a basket of pumpkin bread. Mr K happily munched his way through every slice of cheese but a token one, clearly employing the normally feminine logic that it only counts as greedy should you actually eat them all.
For the sake of comparison, we also took a couple of bottles home – this time round a Lebanese white and a Georgian red. I forget the exact prices, but they were on the cheaper end of the shop’s range at between 150kč and 180kč each. The Cave Kouroum Blanc Perle 2009 was drunk the following night (needless to say, wine doesn’t hang about very long chez Knedlikova...), and the Marani Saperavi dry red not long after that – both of which went down very with both myself and Mr K. I’ll leave the flowery descriptions to the vineyard websites of Cave Kouroum and Tiflisi Marani – Jilly Goolden sadly I am not.
So all in all, with its niche range of wines, yummy cheeses, attentive service and atmospheric interior, V & A Wine Merchants certainly makes for a nice break from the norm - however, when it comes to wine, my loyalties (not to mention those of Mr K and the girlie Review Crew) have and always will be with V & R’s… sorry!! ;-))
Thank you for another well-written review. V&A is one of my favorite wine bars. I wish I had found it sooner.
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