Nottingham’s food and drink scene has seen another new opening – this time with Subterranean Wines in Sneinton Market.
We went down and spoke with co-owner Joel Wright about how it came about, the importance of natural wines and accessibility, and what to expect if you’re thinking about going.
This new bar is a really cosy spot, and perfect for lovers of the good stuff. For more features like this, subscribe to The Notts Edit to receive our articles in your inbox for free.
Subterranean Wines in Sneinton Market is serving great wine without the fuss
Words and photos by Eve Smallman
A glass of wine at the end of the day is one of my favourite treats. In Nottingham city centre, there are plenty of bars that do excellent glasses – but not many that are purely dedicated to them. That has now changed with the arrival of Subterranean Wines in Sneinton Market. On a chilly day, scarf on and hands in pockets, walking into the 20-seat bar feels immediately cosy and inviting. There’s a little Scandi heater, a bar with cheese. Oh, and there’s wine – a lot of it. On keg and on the whole back wall.
I catch Joel, who’s helping customers and kindly answering my questions in between doing so. It’s 2pm and it’s already busy for its opening day. ‘The wine in this country is a little bit stuffy and hard to access, and it can be expensive – so we’re doing as much as we can to make it accessible, while keeping the principles of the winemakers we want to work with,’ says Joel Wright, co-owner of Subterranean Wines.
Joel is a wine importer, with his own business, Wright’s Wines. ‘I started importing wine in 2016 when I was working in Wales, and we started working with natural wines then,’ he says. ‘I was running a place down there, and then in 2020 I went full-time importing natural wines from around France and Europe, but mostly France, Switzerland and the UK. My main business is selling to restaurants and cafés in London as well.’
In terms of wine, he got into natural wine about 15 years ago by drinking wine in London, being excited by those, and wanting to learn more. ‘Eventually, when we started importing, we just knew there were wines that weren’t in the UK that we already liked, so it was really exciting to go and visit the winemakers and start working with them. It just developed very slowly and organically,’ he says.
He continues, ‘My wife is an assistant professor, so I just followed her here to Nottingham. It’s a convenient place to sell wine from – if you’re wholesaling around the country, Nottingham’s kind of in the middle.’
Subterranean Wines is a partnership with Wright’s Wines and Essen General Store in Beeston – a lovely deli brimming with pantry goods, cheeses and breads. ‘I’ve always been interested in doing something in Nottingham that has a focus on the wines that we import,’ Joel explains. ‘I’ve also always loved Sneinton Market – the unit came up, and I just went to talk to them. I said, “Look, I would love to do something here, but I can’t do it on my own because I’ve got the import business. Would you guys be up to doing 50/50?” And they were super into it.’
Sneinton Market has rows of avenues filled with shops, restaurants and creatives, so it was naturally a fit. ‘It happened quite quickly, and we weren’t sure if we’d be able to get the space, but the council were really keen, and we went for it,’ Joel says. ‘I respect what they do – they bring a lot of structure and great products, and they’ve got a really good following already.’ With Essen not having anything in town and Joel’s knowledge of wines, working together just made sense. Like wine and cheese, you might say.
As a wine drinker, truthfully, I don’t tend to think too much about whether it’s natural or not – so I’m keen to find out why natural wine is the focus for this bar. ‘I find natural wines much easier to drink than conventional wines – they’re better for the environment in terms of farming, they’re better with food, and they’re more adaptable and more varied,’ Joel tells me. ‘From visiting the producers, I’ve got more and more convinced that they’re the only kind of wines that I like to drink – and therefore hopefully other people will like to drink them too.’
What I do know about natural wine is that it can be more expensive – so I also wonder how they won’t price people out. ‘For us, a fundamental thing is that we’re serving the wines on keg – we do a house red and a white takeaway for £15, and an orange wine for £17.50 takeaway,’ Joel says. ‘The keg wines are available on tap at around £6 a glass – and we’ve still got wines on the shelf that are £60 as well. It varies, and there’s a lot.’ Looking up at the shelves of gorgeous glass bottles behind me, it’s certainly a real treat for wine lovers.
UK wine is having a bit of a moment currently, with more producers popping up all over and the accolades for them really starting to stack up. ‘Some of that is natural as well, which I think is the most interesting thing in UK wine – I think it just works quite well with the kind of wine we can grow here,’ Joel says.
He continues, ‘We work with a winemaker based in Wales called Dave Morris, who makes amazing wine – this year, the next vintage for the 2025 Pinot Noir is 13.5% alcohol, which is crazy for the UK. In the past, you’re struggling to get to 11% at most, so with climate change there is a lot happening in UK wine, and it’s definitely an exciting moment.’
However, Joel says that UK wine is slightly hamstrung by the fact that it’s really hard to access land in the country. ‘If you go to France, there’s loads of vines everywhere, and it’s easy to rent if you’re a normal person – but in the UK, you kind of have to make someone rich start making, or chance upon someone who’s lost interest in their vineyards,’ he adds. ‘But I think UK wines are coming through at a very interesting level with climate change, more variety, and I think in 10 years we’ll see loads and loads more wine coming our way.’
Subterranean only imports from France, Switzerland and the UK at the moment, as well as having some cider from Wales. ‘This is not because we don’t love wine from other countries, but for me, we started in the Loire and we went further in – so we’re all around France, a little bit on the French side of Switzerland,’ Joel explains. ‘At some point, we might import from Italy – we probably wouldn’t go to the New World because it’s just so far away. But for now, it’s all French and Swiss.’
Gazing up at the enormous wall, it’s hard to know where to start – so I ask if Joel has any favourites. ‘I know all of the winemakers I work with – I work directly with them, so if I chose a favourite, it’d be like choosing between your friends,’ he smiles. ‘It depends where you’re at and what mood you’re in. For this time of year, you start thinking about more red wines, but also some richer white wines, like Chenin Blanc and Anjou. We have one with the birds on the label – Mai and Kenji Hodgson – which makes some really nice, rich Chenins.’
A great way to sample the offering and learn more about it would be to go to an event. ‘We’re going to do an event for Beaujolais Nouveau, which is on the third Thursday of the month – we’ve got a Nouveau Beaujolais coming over from a winemaker,’ Joel says. ‘We’ll do a very simple event with her wines and simple food.’ He also says there will likely be Christmas events and tastings in future.
If a glass of wine in a cosy venue is calling your name, it really is a beautiful spot. ‘Expect a really calm, fun place to have a glass of wine that hopefully is not very stuffy and is very accessible,’ Joel says. ‘It will be natural wine, but we’re not going to bore you with too much information unless you really want more information – it’s just meant to be a nice environment to have a glass of wine, which is super simple and fun.’
Sometimes it doesn’t need to be anything more complicated than that. I come back in the evening and have a glass of wine (alright, I had two!), and I’m enveloped by the cosy atmosphere. I’m sitting outside and it’s buzzing. I hear the chatter around the avenues. It feels like the perfect piece for the Sneinton Market puzzle.
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