Eats

I went on a walking wine tour around Manchester and it might be the perfect afternoon out

Chin chin

Daisy Jackson - 21st November 2025

If you love wine, and you love Manchester, and you’d quite like to do something with your afternoon that celebrates both of those things, can I put you onto the Manchester Wine Tours?

This genius little event sees small groups of people heading across the city on, essentially, an organised and very sophisticated bar crawl.

Imagine Carnage, but instead of drawing on a t-shirt and slamming neon green alcopops, you’re dressed up nicely and visiting some of Manchester’s top food and drink businesses.

Manchester Wine Tours is owned and operated by Kel Bishop, a local food and drink writer and wine teacher.

Each tour is different, taking in different bars, different wines, and different people.

But as a general rule of thumb you can expect to meet up with Kel somewhere centrally, and follow her to around four different bars, sampling one or two wines in each.

You end up drinking roughly two-thirds of a bottle of wine, unless you get lucky with a small group like ours, where we definitely got a little more than that.

And each tour factors in a few points of interest, in classic walking tour style and for even more of a Manchester flavour.

On the Manchester Wine Tour I joined, our route included a few of the city centre’s newest wine hotspots, starting at Kallos, the fantastic greek restaurant in Salford that’s striving to have the largest collection of greek wines in the UK.

Here we tucked into their divine, puffed-up flatbreads and dips, as well as tinned octopus, all paired with a crisp sparkling Domaine Karanika Brut Cuvee Speciale.

Stop one on our Manchester Wine Tours - Kallos — Stop one on our Manchester Wine Tours – Kallos

Then it was on with the big coats for a walk back into the city centre to Sterling.

On a personal note, I’ve been working as a food and drink journalist in Manchester for a decade. I did not expect to have any surprises along the way.

But then Kel led us into the wine room at Sterling – not usually open to the public – and proved me wrong.

Tucked away from the main bar, surrounded by wooden shelves glinting with different wines, we sampled a dry Chenin a New Zealand Lethbridge Chardonnay, and all realised we had been judging Chardonnay far too harshly.

It’s at this stop that Kel really breaks down the art of wine tasting, and how to build your understanding of a wine from sight to smell to sip.

Suitably warmed up, it was time for a dash across to Winsome, the new British restaurant that’s already been added to the Michelin guide, where we crammed around a centrepiece of wine bottle candles dripping in wax to discover the delights of the Greek Alkemi Xenomavro rose – my favourite wine from the night that I bought an extra bottle of to take home.

Each stop of the wine tour offers snacks as well as the wines, and for Winsome it was a delicate squash dish picked by the chef to compliment our drinks.

We also sampled a lethally good Terre de Zeus Xinomavro here – it was a good day for Greek wine.

By this point of the tour we’re like a slightly wobbly gaggle of baby birds, scurrying after Kel towards our final spot for the night – Beeswing.

The Kampus bar provided an Austrian Funkstille Zweigelt (ordered an extra glass of this, it was so good) and a The Good Luck Club Cabernet Sauvignon from the Barossa Valley, plus boards of charcuterie and cheese.

My brain is like a sieve for wine facts (I’ve written up most of this by looking at the labels), but I guess that just means the Manchester Wine Tour will have a repeat customer.

Kel is an expert at reading the room and deftly tailors her tastings to suit each person’s wine experience. For some it’s just the pleasure of drinking a nice wine (here, have a top-up), for others it’s digging into the history and politics of the drink. Some just wanted to uncover a new bar or restaurant, playing tourist in their own city.

It felt as though all seven of us on our tour took something different away from the exact same experience – and is that not the beauty of good hospitality?

It’s all completely accessible, approachable and very, very fun.

You can find out more and book your spot HERE.

Featured image: The Manc Group