Bar Renée

Bar Renée is both a bar and a shop: you can drink a glass at the counter or take the bottle home, and the whole selection is built on low-intervention winemaking — wines made without additives, from producers in Vermont and around the world who work that way as a matter of practice rather than marketing.

What makes it relevant here is that the buying philosophy does not stop at wine. The list runs deliberately into the neighbouring categories: ciders, co-ferments, and a curated set of non-alcoholic drinks chosen with the same eye. That is a meaningful distinction. Most wine bars that stock something alcohol-free stock one thing, usually a de-alcoholised sparkling wine that nobody at the bar has tasted. A shop that treats non-alcoholic bottles as part of the same buying discipline — interesting ferments, unusual producers, things worth talking about — gives a non-drinker the actual bar experience, which is choosing.

The room itself is small and informal, with no reservations taken, and the food is the correct kind of unambitious: charcuterie boards, local cheeses, tinned fish, olives and almonds. It functions as an afternoon place as much as an evening one, opening at noon.

This listing carries a grade of three and no signature drinks. Bar Renée's non-alcoholic selection is a rotating retail assortment rather than a fixed menu, so naming any specific bottle would be wrong within weeks — the honest thing to record is the standing commitment to stock the category properly, which is well evidenced and unusual for a wine bar this size.

Open noon to 10pm Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, to 11pm on Friday and Saturday. Closed Tuesday.