A huge wine and fizz festival will land in Manchester this weekend, bringing over 100 different styles of vino to one of the city’s most iconic venues.
Taking over the newly-reopened New Century concert hall at NOMA, for just £15 a ticket wine lovers can spend three hours sampling as much (or as little) wine and fizz as they like.
With a fine selection of new and old world wines, natural and biodynamic varieties, and some of the city’s best and brightest wine experts on hand to tell you more (if you so wish), it sounds like a veritable wine lover’s paradise.
Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats
Celebrating local independent retailers from the north west, the ticket doesn’t just cover unlimited wine sampling opportunities either.
As part of the £15 ticket price, some wine retailers will be serving up specially matched grazing food. You’ll also be able to take part in tutored tastings, flower arranging and painting sessions, peruse market stalls, grab a glass at the wine bar and enjoy live music throughout.
You can find the full free wine masterclass schedule below:
Friday 7 October
6pm-9pm
Bah Florals – Flower Arranging Workshop Join local florist Bah Florals to create some beautiful bouquets for you to take home and enjoy!
6:30pm-7:00pm Cork Of The North – Tutored Wine Tasting Taste through a selection of tip-top wines, with expert commentary from Cork of the North’s head honcho Marc Hough. Cork of the North’s award winning wine tastings are relaxed and informal, and are just as entertaining as they are educational’.
7:30pm-8:00pm
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Italy Abroad – ‘Extreme Italian wines”
There isn’t a universally accepted definition of extreme wines but these could be defined as “heroic” wines, wines obtained thanks to the fatigue, the sweat, the persistence of small, passionate winemakers, produced in little knows, geographically impervious areas, tiny patches of land retaken from the mountains, in between rocks, or the sea’.
Saturday 8 October
2pm-5pm and 6pm-9pm
Cork and Canvas: Painting Workshop Popup ‘sip and paint’ providers Cork and Canvas Cork and Canvas will be bringing their paints and brushes for you to learn how to paint the perfect sunset whilst enjoying beautiful wines. What could be better?
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2:30-3:00pm Cork Of The North – ‘Taste through a selection of tip-top wines, with expert commentary from Cork of the North’s head honcho Marc Hough. Cork of the North’s award-winning wine tastings are relaxed and informal, and are just as entertaining as they are educational’.
6:30pm-7:00pm
Italy Abroad – ‘Shades of Montepulciano. Montepulciano is a fantastic grape, the dream grape of every winemaker, it has all it is needed to make great wines, still it is often the cheapest wine on the shelf; it lacks the reputation it deserves. The Montepulciano grape is grown in the centre of Italy and it is the main grape of the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo DOC and DOCG Colline Teramane, because of its characteristics it is used in many blends and appellations’.
Feature image – Supplied / The Manc Eats
News
Greater Manchester officially launches five-year climate change action plan
Danny Jones
Greater Manchester has officially begun its five-year climate change action plan, with the overarching goal of becoming a net-zero city region by 2038.
The comprehensive pledge put together over a number of years itself will see Manchester City Council and the nearby local authorities put into action a number of key measures that will help to reduce not only central carbon figures but, eventually, across the 10 boroughs in turn.
Over the last 15 years, emissions have been reduced by approximately 64%, saving an estimated 44,344 tonnes of carbon through cleaner building energy, street lighting and other electronics, as well as the increasingly green and over-growing Bee Network.
They have also insisted that it isn’t just about cutting down on greenhouse gases; the aim is to make the city region and the surrounding areas more sustainable, affordable and create a better standard of life.
Our five-year plan to tackle climate change launches today. 🌏
It details how we’ll continue to deliver dramatic reductions in the amount of carbon we emit (the biggest contributor to climate change). 🏙️
As per the summary on the Council website, in addition to creating more efficient homes, they’re hoping to provide more access to nature and good-quality green space, “public transport you can rely on”, and “better health and wellbeing for those who live, work, study and visit here.”
With a steadily recovering local and national economy (touch wood), they’re also hoping for an influx of new jobs, too.
Summarising the key bullet points leading up to the end of the decade, these are the next steps currently outlined by the Council:
Lower carbon emissions
Grow the use of renewable energy
Improve low-carbon travel in the city
Improve air quality
Grow the city’s natural environment and boost biodiversity
Improve resilience to flooding and extreme heat
Engage and involve our workforce and our city’s communities
Reduce waste and grow reuse, repair, sharing and recycling
Support a move to a more circular economy
Minimise the negative impact of events held in the city
Develop our knowledge of our indirect emissions and lower them
Create a green financing strategy and explore new funding models for the city
Influence the environmental practices of other organisations
As for emissions, the target is now to drop the present output by another 34%, which will prevent almost 43,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from being pumped into the atmosphere.
Having touched upon the continued expansion of the Bee Network infrastructure, Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) is also set to install multiple new travel links over the coming years, including both new tram stops and train stations – further
You can read the climate action plan in full HERE.
Manchester’s firework displays are ‘back with a bang’ as they return from 2026
Emily Sergeant
Council-organised firework displays in Manchester’s parks are set to return from next year, it has been confirmed.
You may remember that these once-popular events have not been held since 2019, as the COVID-19 pandemic initially prevented them from taking place from 2020 onwards, and then following that, they remained paused on a trial basis while the Manchester City Council sought to ‘reprioritise funding’ to support a wider range of free community events across the city.
But now, as it seems, the door was never shut on their potential return.
An ‘improved financial position’ now means that the Council is in a position to bring firework events back, while also still continuing to support other community events.
Papers setting out the Council’s financial position show that fairer funding being introduced by the Government next year will leave the Council better off than previously anticipated, he the reason firework displays have been brought back into the mix.
The Council has admitted that ‘pressures remain’ after so many years of financial cuts, but this new funding creates the opportunity to invest in the things residents have said matter the most to them.
“Manchester prides itself on free community events and we know many people have missed Bonfire night firework spectaculars,” commented Cllr Bev Craig, who is the Leader of Manchester City Council.
“That’s why we are pleased to confirm they’ll be back by popular demand in 2026.
“We know that generations of Mancunians have enjoyed Council-organised displays and that free family events are a great way to bring people together… [and] now that this Government is actually investing in Councils like ours rather than the cuts we had since 2010, we can bring back Bonfire events.”
Georgina Pellant -
5th October 2022 
