Katherine MacAlister treats her taste buds with the flavour of her favourite tipple as she wines and dines at a contemporary venue

It was a clever move, grabbing the corner plot at the Walton Street end of Little Clarendon Street, Oxford’s cocktail alley.

Because although the Oxford Wine Cafe in Summertown is still doing a roaring trade, it’s more of a local bar, and rather out of the way.

Little Clarendon Street, on the other hand, is much more mainstream and visibly larger so able to mop up any passing trade and the flow of people and couples out for a good time.

Plus, if you don’t want to drink litres of exotic hard liquor or pints of ale, the second venture, Oxford Wine Cafe Jericho is now there to offer an alternative in the shape of a nice glass of wine, without the formality of a sit down meal.

With 250 bottles of wine to choose from, 25 by the glass, they’ve got it covered.

It has a mainly female clientele, largely because it’s an easy, unassuming place to be. There’s also teh fact that lots of women don’t like going to pubs, bars and clubs, to get chatted up, hassled or compete with a bunch of 20-something’s to get served.

That is is why they have already started flocking to this big, light, open, bustling new venue, with lots of standing room, intimate tables and unique features like the glass floor which reveals the cellar beneath, or the wall made of champagne bottles.

There is no hot food at the Oxford Wine Cafe, they obviously prefer to do without the hassle of chefs and a proper kitchen, but do serve platters – cheese, meat, fish or veggie.

As we were off to the cinema straight afterwards and didn’t want anything too pungent, we opted for the £9.95 veggie board – artichoke hearts, feta cheese cubed and served in a tiny jar of oil, sourdough bread, gherkins, roasted red peppers and hummus with a dab of pesto in the middle.

And it suits, because you can drink some beautiful wine, chat, laugh, pick, nibble and share and the evening unwinds in a very undemonstrative manner.

The acoustics aren’t great.

It can become so noisy in there you have to shout to be heard, but creates a suitably bustling atmosphere.

The platters are around £10 each, and with a bottle of wine it cost around £30 for three of us. A tenner each.

They don’t skimp on ingredients either, choosing tapas style food without compromising on quality. And while the food doesn’t set the world on fire, and the gherkins were so vinegary they nearly stripped off my eyebrows, it was a very pleasant, if suitably middle-class way to spend an evening.

And it doesn’t end there, because with record sales to spur them on, the Oxford Wine Company is already looking for their next venue, this time in central Oxford, which we look forward to for all the same reasons.

The Oxford Wine Cafe, 32 Little Clarendon Street, Jericho, Oxford
01865 604334 oxfordwinecafe.co.uk