#DivinoEnoteca

[insurepair]

Competition Time! 🍷🍝💷 You could win a £100.00 Voucher for Divino Enoteca Italian Restaurant & Wine Bar - and it’s easy to be a potential winner! Just; Like our page ⬆️ Comment with a 👍 Share this post ↘️ Tag 3 mates ⬇️ The winner will be announced on the 13th of February just in time for Valentine’s ❤️ Day, chosen at random by our media manager whist blindfolded! Good luck 🤞🏻 #competition #divino #divinoenoteca #insurepair #edinburgh #grassmarket (at Divino Enoteca) https://www.instagram.com/p/CY7o8aTIWPI/?utm_medium=tumblr

[fionaluvsfood-blog]

Words cannot describe how amazing our visit to #divinoenoteca was in #edinburgh, it’s a place I’ve wanted to visit for a long time. Head over to the blog to read why and what we had and thought about it! . . . . #foodie #italianeats #edinburghfood #eatoutedinburgh #photofoodie #foodielife #foodblogger #linkinbio #foodiegram #edinburgh (at Divino Enoteca)

[wanderingwinewoman]

Cavernous Bars in Capital Cities.

Somewhere along the path of growing up I discovered a love of caves. Perhaps it's from hours of playing hide and seek; perhaps it's from being locked in my Grandparents' shed by my mischievous older brother; perhaps it's the many nights I spent in grimy, basement bass-filled clubs as a student. So, discovering my two favourite wine bars - which happen to be in caves - in my two favourite cities has somewhat cushioned the blow of reaching my mid-twenties. Though I'm undertaking a grown-up pastime in these musty and damp institutions, the excited anticipation I feel in them takes me back to my childhood. Does this add to the enjoyment of the wine savoured in them? Probably.

Gordon's Wine Bar, tucked down an alley near embankment underground station, is a London institution where workers and tourists stand side by side creating its famous buzz (it might sound strange me saying this, but we Londoners go out of our way to avoid the 'tourist traps'). This buzzing activity is what I imagine the inside of an ant colony to be like. The cavernous inside of Gordon's is like a sweet shop for adults with barrels of Port, Sherry and Madeira behind the counter. There is a selection of food at the entrance - think party buffet for children hyped up on sugar, but replace the sugar with wine, the children with adults and party with gourmet. Outside the cave you find one of London's best drinking and social smoking alleys. Sheltered from the Thames breeze, I maintain that it's even possible to sit there in December, although some friends who know about my love of sitting outside bars and pubs in the freezing cold may tend to disagree. Great in all seasons, there is even something about Gordon's that manages to lure me on the tube to central London on a sweltering summer day after work, and that is being able to ask for a bottle of chilled Beaujolais without being looked at blankly or being sneered at.

Back in the city with those bass-filled basement caves of my student days, I was introduced to Divino Enoteca three years after graduating. It's probably for the best that it did not exist until after I had finished university, otherwise I'd probably be a degreeless, wine-debt-ridden waif. This second cavernous wine bar is underneath an Edinburgh institution, Vittoria's on George IV Bridge.  This Italian wine heaven comes equipped with three enomatic wine dispensers (a vending machine for adults that keeps the bottle airtight and wine in good condition even once the bottle has been opened) in a space that has that wonderful cellar smell any wine lover is fond of. Once you make your way down to the cave it's time to choose some wine, which is easier said than done, not because the wines are terrible or because there is too much to choose from, but because the staff are so helpful; they do not hurry you and they let you taste nearly everything in your search for the perfect glass. My only regret about my visit is that I didn't have more time to spend there. Given enough time, Divino and I would become good friends, just like me and Gordon's.

Now these two wine cave diamonds have been added to my favourite places, I will be wandering through cities to add more to my collection.

Until next time,

WWW

[fionaluvsfood-blog]

Words cannot describe how amazing our visit to #divinoenoteca was in #edinburgh, it’s a place I’ve wanted to visit for a long time. Head over to the blog to read why and what we had and thought about it! . . . . #foodie #italianeats #edinburghfood #eatoutedinburgh #photofoodie #foodielife #foodblogger #linkinbio #foodiegram #edinburgh (at Divino Enoteca)