Not been over to Finsbury Park for aeons? This weekend you could do worse than mosey on down to cosy shop-cum-bar Oak for a rummage around the 180 bottles of vino lining the shelves.
As well as seeking advice for a bold red to go with steak, or crisp white with fish, it’s worth pulling up a pew at one of the rustic wooden tables to peruse the rotating global list for a sneaky glass in-house.
And while you sup on a zingy Albariño or a full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon, you can order nibbles from an appetising menu featuring the likes of charcuterie platters, burrata, sardines and crusty bread. Yum.
Owner Cam McKeown opened the inviting space at the end of 2016; he previously ran nightclubs in Australia for 10 years, and has always retained a passion for decent plonk. Why Finsbury Park? Cam lives in the area and realised there were no decent outlets for wine in the vicinity. Nothing like a bit of entrepreneurship.
As if we need more incentives to sink an organic, natural, vegan (or simply house) wine, on Sundays there’s also a rota of live music: March 17th sees Valentina CX and some hangover-soothing jazz, while talented singer Marta Capponi is on the 24th and hip-hop DJ Johnny Voltik the week after.
They also offer a range of informal tasting events that introduce us lay-people to complex tipples we may not have tried before.
The big news is that Oak’s first Open House afternoon is on March 23rd: for a tenner, you get the chance to sample an array of grape varieties from a host of regions, with suppliers and experts on hand to answer questions.
Over the course of the day the team plan on opening forty to fifty bottles, so go easy now, at least to begin with (note to self).
And, at some blue-sky point in the future, we look forward to Oak N4 spreading its wings to NW5 (perhaps the just-vacated Oddbins on Kentish Town Road?).
In the meantime, chin-chin.
