Highbury Vintners

Consider one of the "10 Best Online Wine Shops in England"!!!

You can buy wine online, you can browse by type, country, region or grape and the recommendation section is very handy.

If you're up north London way, it's worth visiting their award winning wine shop in Islington, London - Over 1000 wines to choose from.

This shop can be found on 71 Highbury Park with the closest stations Arsenal and Highbury & Islington only a short walk away.

A great off licence/wine shop. My focus is usually on the wine. In this respect it stocks a good variety of wine from around the world - including a particularly good selection from the New World. The staff are on hand for a recommendation and I have never got the sense that they were seeking to push a dud bottle onto me. Quite the contrary in fact - all the bottles I have bought here have been excellent.

In addition to the wine, a good selection of spirits and beer is on offer. The beer isn't just your run of the mill stella. Instead it is a selection of bottled beers from both the UK and overseas which are more unusual. I haven't worked my way through them all (yet) but there are no doubt lots of enjoyment to be had doing so. Of those sampled so far the beer brewed by the Redchurch Brewary has been particularly good, if a little pricey.

I have a dilemma here. The Vintners have an excellent beer range which actually included beers I had not previously encountered from two of my favourite breweries (Kernel & Arbor). However the chap in charge when we visited a few weeks ago was grumpy and argumentative when we asked a couple of questions about the beer and then very obviously annoyed with us when we left a couple of beers on the counter while searching for a couple more to add to our purchase. The girl who checked us out was very friendly but we left feeling uncomfortable about the place and actually since then looked into and subsequently had some beer delivered from online sources for a party we were having, specifically so that we didn't have to come back.

Usually people with such good beer selections are quite keen to talk about them and this unnecessary unfriendliness particularly stood out when contrasted with the people we spoke to in our first visit to the other shops around Highbury Barn.

I might be back because it is the local store with by far the best beer range, but will resist the temptation as long as I can.

I seriously have no idea about wine and wouldn't be able to pick a good bottle to save my life (and this place is like the A to Z of wines they have it all!!). But I do love my beer especially Ale; not a lot of places will have such a selection of ales and will stock my favourite but weird, not-so-"mainstream" bottles.
The staff are excellent, they will help you with their really impressive knowledge to choose from wine, champagne, beers and even crisps.
Absolutely happy I stumbled upon this shop.

I'll fully admit that I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to wine- I know what I like but I need a bit of guidance when it comes to getting out of my comfort zone. This is why I like Highbury Vintners so much. Staff are incredibly helpful and offer a lot of advice when it comes to paring a wine with food or choosing a grape that you might enjoy. Before I found Highbury Vintners my experiences in wine shop's had always been quite negative and I got the feeling that asking for a bit of help was like wearing a sign that said, 'Get as much money out of me as you can!' Highbury Vintners is not like this at all. The shop has a considerable amount of stock and the staff are always happy to accommodate your budget whether it's five or seventy-five pounds. I now try hard to follow their advice and have found myself becoming more and more adventurous and confident with my choices.

I'll admit to buying cheap beer and wine. Often. But sometimes, I like to pretend that I'm a classy lady who can afford to have good taste. In these instances, I'll head to Highbury Vintners and la Fromagerie.

We first stopped in Highbury Vintners when we noticed the Dogfish Head beer in the window. WHAT?! DOGFISH HEAD IN LONDON?!!!?!?? Maaaagiiiic. It was not cheap, admittedly. But it got us in the door (it was the 60 minute IPA, if you care). The beer selection here is one of the best in an off-license that I've seen. They don't always have the same selection, but it's always reliably excellent.

The staff is more than willing to help. I need to get more into buying wine here on the regular. If only I could get away from buying desperation wine on the way home after a long day...

We first found Highbury Vintners walking back to Finsbury Park after going to La Fromagerie (just down the road! if you've not been check it out!), and we love checking out wine shops so we stopped in. Then the rain came. So we were here for quite some time checking out the amazing selection.

It's become one of our favorite places now. Not only do they have an interesting wine selection from around the world, they also have a great selection of beers to look through. For the wines, they have a case deal - 5% off for a case of six and 10% for a case of ten. We're often stocking up on dessert wines here as they have a great selection (plus a full-sized bottle of Maury!) from all over the world. I think my favorite is the Franz Haas black muscat (which we were already fans of bud didn't know we could get locally), but we've tried quite a few from there that we like.

The beer selections are great. I fell in love with the Samuel Smith's bottled beers when I was in the US, and it's nice to be able to find them in the shop. And when it's the time of year for the Winter Welcome ale, they have that in stock. They also carry the Kernel brewery beers: delicious (and we still need to check out the brewery in London).

All in all you can't really go wrong. The staff are super friendly. I was listening to one of them talk to one of the customers about a beer they had in stock. Apparently Ferran Adria has create a beer and it's supposed to be amazing. I might have to get a bottle the next time we're here.

The only problem is that we usually end up with a case or more. Which is a bit of a pain as we're usually taking the train, so we're carrying a lot of wine and beer home by hand!

This place is tops.

- Amazing diversity of stock
- Ridiculously good craft beer selection
- Extremely helpful staff

A+, Highbury Vintners.

Beer selection was good here but the gent at the register took the opportunity to pass off an old fiver on a paying customer who is obviously a foreigner, leaving need to figure out how to dispose of it when most banks won't take it. Either he thought he was being cute, or he wanted to unload it on an unsuspecting customer. Either way, not very customer friendly

Nice atmosphere, friendly and attentive staff. I had a chorizo and lentil stew that hit the spot on a cold day after watching the Arsenal. The house red was also very decent.