Have you always wanted to live the high life but thought you couldn’t afford to?
Well now you can thanks to Birmingham’s latest revolutionary new haven, Bottles.
Here you can taste the wine – and only pay according to your own budget.
What’s more, there isn’t a catch.
You simply pay for what you can afford to drink.
And if that’s a tiny 25ml amount of the best wine in the house... well, at least you can say you’ve tried it!
There will be 300 wines, ports and Champagnes to choose from as well brunch, afternoon tea and late-night nibbles.
And, judging on first appearances and owner Richard Everton’s contact list, Bottles is also set to become a real celebrity haunt, too.
It's just yards from the BBC in the Mailbox and the Everyman Cinema.
How does the wine tasting work?
To taste some of the expensive wines, you can pre-load a bank-style smart card with as little or as much as you want to spend.
You then press it into a slot in one of the Italian-made machines which can keep even the most expensive bottles of wine fresh for a month once opened.
Make your selection and the machine will dispense as little as 25ml of fine wine for you to taste.
Which gives you a taster of some of the expensive wines without you having to spend a fortune - or indeed a chance to get a less expensive wine for as little as 60p.
So if you've ever wanted to know what a £40 bottle of wine tastes like without the risk of finding out that it's not for you, now you can.
Once your card has run out of money you can load it up again.
Why Bottles will be the opposite of what you might expect
Richard has lived and breathed the industry for 40 years, so he will never doff his cap to wine snobs.
“There is so much pomp, pompousness and bull**** in our industry, especially from people in pinstripe suits,” he says.
“They are often from London and I call them ‘wine clowns’ because they give the wine trade a bad image.
“I am the total opposite of stuffy.
“I just want customers to come in here to relax and to enjoy themselves and to try some wines they might not have been able to afford before.
“There are lots of people like me who want to have an interest in wine.
“Yes, we’ll do tastings and classes like we do in Worcester, but coming here won’t be like going out on a Tuesday and being lectured to.
“We recognise that people want to have a laugh – it’s their social life.
“Bottles is not about getting rosettes for our food, even though it will be good with everything made for sharing whether it’s charcuterie from Italy, Spain or Britain, or tapas, or even a bowl of coq au vin with mash.
“Our food will be made to complement our drinks, so don’t come in expecting to find us doing curries. It will be simple but comforting food.
“We will also have craft and bottled beers, but only one draught – Moretti.”
Bottles’ general manager will be Mohibur Rahman, who has worked previously for Shimla Pinks and TGI Fridays.
What is Bottles?
The new venue has been created out of the shell of the old, champagne-fuelled Bar Epernay at the Mailbox.
The parent company is still Cotswold Inns, in that they own the lease on the premises and are helping to finance the new enterprise.
But the big difference is that Bottles is a family created business that has been a huge success in its native Worcester.
What is going to be most special about it?
“Wine bars were a big thing in the 1980s but they were more about the social side than the wine,” says Richard.
“I then had an idea in my head about having wines on display that would be the menu, like a visual wine list.
“And I wanted to be able to offer more wines than anybody else – we’ll have 40 here available by the glass – and by that I include sherries, champagnes, sparkling wines, Prosecco... I class them all as wines.”
How do you keep 40 bottles on the go?
“We use special Wine Emotion machines imported from Italy.
“In Worcester they use argon gas, but these newer ones still have a pump which can turn ordinary air into gas which keeps a bottle fresh for a month – every home should have one, but they do cost thousands!
“These machines mean we can bring very expensive wines to the masses.
“People might want to experiment to see if they would pay £40 for a bottle, but ordinarily they wouldn’t pay that much if think they won’t like it.
“So we offer measures from 25ml upwards so, for example, you might pay £3 to try a £100 bottle of wine just so that you can experience it to see if it's for you."
What is the company’s history?
Bottles’ heritage goes back almost 100 years to 1918 when Molly Everton ran the village stores in Ombersley, a village near Worcester.
Her son Donald Everton, now 86, and his wife Jan, 84, then took the business onwards and upwards with wine at its heart.
Now their son Richard Everton, 51, is hoping to expand his Bottles empire – having first tasted win at the age of four.
“I dipped my finger in, had a taste – and never looked back,” he beams.
“The choice of career for me was to either join The Army or to drink wine, so it was a no brainer.
“I was good at drinking it and now I make a living from it and have worked across South Africa and France learning all about wine.”
Having taken his subject seriously for 40 years, Richard is a real expert who is constantly tasting.
“The most expensive wine I’ve had myself would be £2,000 a bottle or a taste from a barrel that would be for £2,000 bottles.”
Can a bottle of wine really ever be worth even £100+?
“That’s a good question,” says Richard.
“What you pay for is consistency.
“The best wines can be made when it’s not a good year.
“They come from aged vines on the best aspects on the best hills which all help to concentrate the fruit.
“Here, you can now try one!”
Are all expensive wines good?
“No, they are not,” says Richard.
“Only good wines are worth the money.
“Don’t be fooled elsewhere. Remember the wine snobs!”
How are you launching?
“I didn’t even know about this until literally two months ago when I had a conversation with the bosses of Cotswold Inns,” says Richard.
“They also own Penny Blacks below us and Utopia across from the Hotel du Vin.
“Other offers had fallen through for the site post Bar Epernay had fallen through and they then asked me if I wanted to do something.”
Although twice married Richard has four children of his own aged from eight to 26 as well as a 30-year-old stepson, he adds: “I have project managed the whole thing from design to build by working from 3am till 11pm every day, even creating lights out of bottles.
“We will have a reduced menu until next year and we will then relaunch in January."
Where is Bottles?
Bottles Wine Bar, 171-172 The Mailbox, Wharfside Street, Birmingham B1 1RL. Tel 0121 643 2072. Website here
When is it open?
It will open to the public from 6pm on Thursday, December 1.
Full opening hours are yet to be confirmed.
