A wine truck is set to hit the streets of Manchester next month, and it’s featuring top tier French wines from the Loire Valley.
As part of its ‘Bucket List’ tour, Loire Valley Wines is sending out its wine truck to give people the chance to “discover the region’s finest grape produce varieties alongside the beauties of the main UK’s cities”.
And Manchester is one of the cities on the visiting schedule.
Designed to offer a taste of France’s renowned Loire vineyards, the wine truck will run as part of a wider campaign in which bespoke wine tasting menus, offers, and giveaways will be available to make the most of at bars and restaurants across the UK.
The Little Loire Wine Truck will be at the Manchester Food & Drink Festival (MFDF) on Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 September from 11.30am – 7pm, with an expert sommelier on hand to take passers-by through free walk-in tastings, with bottles ranging from whites to rosés spanning Muscadet to Touraine.
Budding wine connoisseurs can also enter a competition to have the wine truck stop off at their own home too.
As well as the wine truck popping up for the weekend at the city’s annual flagship food and drink festival, the Manchester Bucket List also features a handful of carefully-selected places to stop off at throughout September and dip a toe into the wines of the Loire Valley.
A brand-new discovery route packed with treasures and discoveries has been curated especially for the occasion, with six Manchester bars already signed up to take part.
“The Loire Bucket List is for adventure seekers,” a spokesperson for the event said.
“Our discovery routes take you to the ‘secret’ places in your city, to see exciting and unexpected things, alongside a few carefully curated places to stop off to and explore the wines of the Loire Valley along the way.
“Our collaborative events offer further opportunities to explore Loire Wines, from free in-store sampling to full guided tastings and of course, visits to our little Wine Truck, which will pop up around the UK.”
The wine truck will run as part of a wider campaign in which bespoke wine tasting menus, offers, and giveaways will be available / Credit: Em Zoode
The venues lined-up to host special wine events in Manchester are:
Manchester Tennis & Racquet Club
Flok
Mr Thomas’ Chop House
Atomeca
Oystercatcher
Man Bites Frog
Grape To Grain
With prices starting from as little as £15, and many still TBC, wines such as Rosé d’Anjou Famille Bougrier 2020, Touraine Sauvignon Domaine Guenault Bougrier 2020, Muscadet Polaris Batard Langelier, Clos La Cariziere, and L’Extra par Langlois Brut NV Crémant de Loire are all on the menu across each of the participating venues for wine enthusiasts to wet their whistle.
Specially-selected ‘wines of the month’, and food and wine pairings will also be available to try.
Specially-selected ‘wines of the month’, and food and wine pairings will also be available to try / Credit: Unsplash
Lively Irish pub Nancy Spains set to open in Manchester for the first time
Daisy Jackson
An Irish bar famed for its live music is heading up to Manchester for the first time, and is promising £2.50 pints to lure us in.
Nancy Spains will be venturing out of London for the first time promising to bring the ‘ultimate traditional Irish pub experience’ to the Northern Quarter.
If you were to ask what the hottest trend in hospitality is right now the answer would, apparently, be Guinness. We’re drowning in the stuff.
This latest opening is more about Murphy’s, another Irish stout, than Guinness (they actually won’t serve Guinness at all) but the craic will be much the same.
Nancy Spains is actually set to open almost directly opposite the aforementioned Salmon of Knowledge, taking over the former Corner Boy unit on Stevenson Square in the heart of Manchester.
To celebrate its opening, the pub will be serving its first 5000 pints of Murphy’s for just £2.50, so that it can show off the atmosphere that’s established it as ‘one of London’s favourite pubs’.
They’re promising an array of Irish whiskeys behind the bar, live music performances, and a lively late-night setting.
Nancy Spains was set up by three brothers who travelled all over their home county of rural Kerry researching Irish pubs, before launching two venues down in London.
They want it to balance a traditional pub with the vibrancy of the city.
Peter O’Halloran, co-founder of Nancy Spains commented, “We’re so excited to be launching in Manchester, bringing Nancy Spains to the heart of the Northern Quarter.
“After the success of our two venues in London, it was only right to bring Nancy Spains’ infectious spirit and Irish pride to Manchester. Slainte!”
Nancy Spains will open its first Manchester pub on Saturday 15 March at 21 Hilton Street.
Lucky Mama’s – The Italian restaurant serving pasta in a dough bowl and ‘pregnant’ pizzas
Daisy Jackson
Lucky Mama’s is a local sensation, thanks to its slightly whacky but delicious Italian creations like pasta served in a bowl made of pizza dough and its latest offering, a ‘pregnant’ pizza.
What on Earth is a pregnant pizza, you ask? Firstly we should stress this is a nickname we’ve bestowed upon the dish, rather than Lucky Mama’s chosen branding.
But essentially it’s a helping of fresh pasta that’s folded into the bubble crust of the pizza, like a half-calzone.
Lucky Mama’s started life when founders Mamadou Dhiam and Gaby Santos set up a trailer in their backyard in Eccles in the depths of lockdown.
But thanks to a formidably loyal following that’s spread the word of Lucky Mama’s far and wide, it now has two pretty pink restaurants in Greater Manchester.
Back in 2022, they threw open the doors to their Chorlton restaurant, before returning back to home turf for spot number two in Monton in 2024.
The recipes are fresh and pretty authentically Italian up until the last step, when they throw a curveball by loading their pasta into unconventional vessels.
‘Pregnant’ pizzas at Lucky Mama’sTraditional Roman pizzasLucky Mama’s pink restaurant in Chorlton
Their pasta pizza bowls are what they’re best known for and they fly out of the kitchen – this is where pizza dough is placed around a metal bowl before being baked in an oven.
Then it’s piled high with freshly made pasta, with popular flavours like cacio e pepe, mushroom alfredo, and rasta pasta.
Pasta is available in a regular ceramic bowl too.
You’ll find Lucky Mama’s at 565 Barlow Moor Road in Chorlton; and 217 Monton Road in Eccles.
The Manc -
2nd September 2021 
