One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 112 ......... the bottle of wine and a day in town

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since. *

Wine and pizza, in Florence, 2019

Now I have no idea if Joe and Mary Ann, drank wine, but in the years, I have lived here, I can say we consumed a lot, to the point where it always seemed we were set on draining the wine lake.

It would of course be totally unhistorical to speculate on how much if any wine was drunk by Mr. and Mrs. Scott, and while some will be tempted by assumptions about wine consumption amongst working class people in the first half the last century I shall not go there.

Instead I shall reflect that those of us who occupied the house from the 1970s onwards, and were born after the last war, embraced wine.

It accompanied meals, was often drunk casually in the evenings and was always what you took when visiting friends.

What we drank during the decades changed, from cheap Spanish plonk to those German wines popular in the 1970s and onto Greek and Italian wines brought back from holidays abroad.

French wine and French guests, 1978

And I remember the chosen drink in the 70s, was a brand of French wine, which came in plastic litre bottles, and the appeal was less the wine, and rather, that the containers were plastic which was a counter statement to all those wine buffs, added to which the litre bottle put more on the table.

At the same time as a break from evenings in the Trevor, we would fall into the Cellar Vie on Lloyd Street and revel in what went for sophisticated living.

Wine bars for me were new, and did have a fascination over the pub.  They fitted into that lifestyle which included weekly visits to Habitat, meals at the Bella Napoli on Kennedy Street and a growing awareness of all things new and different.

Sadly Cellar Vie, disappeared from Lloyd Street, reappeared on Faulkner Street, and was back on Lloyd Street, described by one source as a “an African Nightclub offering the best entertainment and …. a selection of African & Caribbean imported drinks”.**

Cellar Vie II, Faulkner Street, 1985

For those who want more there is an entry in that excellent Pubs of Manchester Past & Present, with some fascinating photographs which copyright prevents me from showing, along with an update which records that the African Night Club closed in 2008. ***

And that is why on recent visits to Lloyd Street, I failed to find it.

On a more positive note, we shall be in another wine bar, just around the corner on Brazenose Street this week, for  “A TRIP TO SICILY" wine tasting event courtesy of our Polly and Josh.  It was one of their Christmas presents and as the summer rolls on it seemed appropriate to cash it in now.

I have only been to one other wine tasting evening which was in the Power House of the Science and Industry Museum, so this weeks foray to Sicily is one to look forward to.

None of which gets me any closer to whether Joe and Mary Ann, drank wine in the house, but after a few at Veeno Manchester, I doubt I will want to go looking.

Location; Chorlton and Manchester

Pictures; Florence; 2019, from the collection of Saul Simpson and Emilka Cholewicka, Cellar Vie II, Faulkner Street, 1985, M Luft, M49356, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


*The story of a house,
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

** Cellar Vie Nightclub, inapub, http://www.inapub.co.uk/venues/cellar-vie/manchester/M25WA/27921

***Pubs of Manchester Past & Present, https://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/2010/01/cellar-vie-cellar-vie-ii.html



The story of a house