Lower Wine Bar & Shop opened in Waterloo, London, in February. It is the first venture for friends Alex Pitt, Blaise Coley and Skye Alejandro, who all have hospitality backgrounds. 

Pitt worked at the 10 Cases restaurant and wine bar in Covent Garden for over five years and has also made wine with Heidi Shröck in Austria.

“I really got stuck into the buying role at 10 Cases. It was a great place to work and they almost let me run it like it was my own,” he says. 

“There’s so much amazing wine out there and what seems like an endless amount of suppliers. I think over my time at 10 Cases I worked with 50 or 60 of them. 

“At Lower Wine it’s much smaller, but I’m still working with about 30 suppliers. I’m probably making a bit more work for myself but I do love that side of it. I suppose I am a bit fickle in my buying habits and I don’t want to have a static wine list. I want it to be quite fluid.

“A lot of the wines are from producers that I’ve met, either in London or I’ve been out to visit. I had a nice trip to Greece last year, which was really insightful, so I’ve got a couple of really nice Greek wines on the menu. 

“I would say the list is made up of good, honest artisanal wines. I’m trying to get away from the buzzword ‘natural wine’ that everyone chucks around but doesn’t really have any idea what it means. I find that a bit exhausting sometimes.”

The premises could be described as cosy, but there is capacity for 25 covers on the ground floor and the shop is in the cellar. Pitt says: “The retail element isn’t huge – it probably accounts for about 10% – but it is definitely the sector of the business that I’m trying to grow.

“The whole business model was pretty low-key,” he adds, “as we’re on quite a short lease, and we had a lot of help from people setting it up. Blaise’s dad and her brother basically fitted it out and everything we got was second-hand apart from the freezer and the convection oven. 

“There’s definitely a possibility of expansion, but I don’t want it to be too quick just because I think we’ve got something quite special at Lower and we’ve got a really nice little neighbourhood and so many regulars already.”