Carmen Street Wine

Carmen Street Wine is Giles Coram's second venue, opened as a sister site to Caper & Cure (see that row, also his, run with Craig Summers) in nearby St Paul's, and expanded again in November 2025 with a new bottleshop and event space. At the heart of that expansion sits a bespoke charcoal-oak table, hand-made by Ennis & Brown, seating up to 20 for wine tastings, private events and communal dinners, with four smaller bistro tables alongside it -- and the venue's own site independently confirms a slightly larger overall private-dining capacity of up to 24 for a seated dinner, or 30 for a drinks-and-snacks format. Most usefully for this series, Carmen Street Wine's own site states plainly that "private dining is offered Sunday - Wednesday, for lunch and evening events" -- a direct match to exactly the early-week nights this series needs, not an inference from general opening hours.

The food is a concise, wine-bar-appropriate menu -- charcuterie, cheeses, padron peppers, tinned fish, moules marinière, croquettes -- built to sit alongside a bottle list of more than 150 wines leaning organic and biodynamic, curated by Coram himself and praised independently for "excellent taste in wine." An independent review describes the room as "the sort of cosy yet stylish spot that feels like hospitality actualised," a lively snug where regulars drift in and greet each other across the room -- genuinely social rather than a quiet backroom.

Being newly expanded rather than newly opened, Carmen Street Wine's exact founding date as a standalone venue (distinct from this November 2025 bottleshop expansion) was not pinned down independently this pass -- worth confirming directly if age-against-brief matters for this venue specifically. St Paul's/Stokes Croft here sits at the edge of the same dense independent strip as Caper & Cure, a short walk between the two.