Racing fans who are looking to celebrate the return of the Aintree Festival are about to find out that drinks prices at the event are more expensive than ever before, as the official drinks menu and its prices have been published.
The Aintree Festival has officially kicked off today, with its marquee race – The Grand National – taking place at 5.15pm this Saturday 15 April.
Attendees will find that the price of a pint at the festival is as high as £7.50 for a Madri, Staropramen, Guinness or Rekorderlig cider. Meanwhile, pints of Carling are on offer for a slightly cheaper price of £7.20.
Furthermore, research from Betting.com has revealed that these prices make Aintree the UK’s most expensive racecourse when it comes to pints.
Like Aintree, Last month’s Cheltenham Festival is one of the most popular events on the racing calendar, however, it is also one of the most expensive when it comes to pints, with a pint of Guinness matching Aintree’s astonishing fee of £7.50.
ADVERTISEMENT
Image: Aintree race course
Image: Aintree race course
Alternative alcoholic drinks at Cheltenham were found to be only slightly cheaper, with Pravha priced at £7.40, while Doom Bar costs punters £7.00 and Carling is available for £6.90 a pint.
The next-most expensive racecourses for pints are Sandown, where every variation of pint, including lagers, ciders and Guinness is valued at £6.80.
There’s also the famous Epsom Festival, where a pint of Pravha is priced at an expensive £6.70, however, a pint of Guinness costs a ginormous £7.00 – no wonder everyone tries to win big at the races!
The cheapest racecourse pint is found at Ludlow, where a wide choice of beverages including beer (Dortmunder) and cider (Stowford Press), which are priced at a very reasonable £4.00.
For Guinness lovers looking to save pocket at the races, the best bet is Taunton where a pouring of the popular stout costs just £5.00. It’s also worth checking out Chelmsford and Salisbury, racecourses that charge just £5.50 for a Guinness.
If pints aren’t your tipple of choice, prices still remain high at the Aintree Festival. Wines will set punters back £8.75 per 187.5ml glass, or £34 per 750ml bottle. Meanwhile, there is a variety of champagnes available all priced between £78 and £122.50 per 750ml bottle.
As expected, a wide range of spirits are also available at Aintree Festival, which are all priced at £6.00 per 25ml serving. An accompanying soft drink comes with an additional charge of £2.50.
Featured image – Carling
Food & Drink
This Manchester bar serves a bottomless cheese fondue with endless beer and wine
Georgina Pellant
There’s a bar in Manchester serving a bottomless cheese fondue with endless wine and beer, and it honestly sounds like the perfect treat.
While it might scream cosy winter night in, with a huge outdoor terrace, The Mews is also a firm favourite during the summer months.
Add in a board of melt-in-the-mouth charcuterie, springy pieces of garlic sourdough and a host of crunchy cheese biscuits, and you’ve got yourself the ideal afternoon if you ask us.
But there’s more. Alongside all that cheese and meat and bread, included in the price of The Mews’ bottomless fondue, cheese lovers can also enjoy 90 minutes of non-stop drinks.
Bottomless cheese fondue at The Mews on Deansgate in Manchester. (Credit: The Manc Eats)
Costing £37.50 each, included in the deal is a huge pot of melted Italian Fontina cheese served with homemade garlic croutons, sourdough crackers, and slices of British charcuterie.
You’ll also get to enjoy an hour and a half of endless pints of house pilsner and carafes of red or white wine to enjoy alongside.
Serving up to six people, the bottomless cheese fondue is available only when you pre-book, so make sure to get in touch ahead of your visit to let The Mews know that you’re coming.
If you’re not on the sauce, you can opt for the cheese fondue alone. Without the booze, it’s quite a bit cheaper at £25 for one, and £2.50 on top for any additional people who want to get stuck in.
Housed up on Deansgate Mews, just behind the main hustle and bustle of Deansgate, there’s plenty of space inside as well as a large, secluded terrace that is quite the suntrap (when the Manchester sun is shining).
‘The average cost of a pint’ in the UK by region, according to the latest data
Danny Jones
Does it feel like pints keep getting more and more expensive almost every week at this point? Yes. Yes, it does, and while you can’t expect a city as big as Manchester to be one of the cheapest places to get one in the UK, we do often wonder how it compares to other parts of the country.
Well, as it happens, someone has recently crunched the numbers for us across the nation, breaking down which regions pay the most and the least for their pints.
The data has been examined by business management consultancy firm, CGA Strategy, using artificial intelligence and information from the latest Retail Price Index figures to find out what the ‘average cost of a pint’ is down south, up North and everywhere in between.
While the latest statistics provided by the group aren’t granular enough to educate us on Greater Manchester’s pint game exactly, we can show you how our particular geographic region is looking on the leaderboard at the moment.
That’s right, we Mancunians and the rest of the North West are technically joint mid-table when it comes to the lowest average cost of a pint, sharing the places from 3rd to 8th – according to CGA, anyway.
Powered by consumer intelligence company, NIQ (NielsenIQ) – who also use AI and the latest technology to deliver their insights – we can accept it might seem like it’s been a while since you’ve paid that little for a pint, especially in the city centre, but these are the stats they have published.
Don’t shoot the messenger, as they say; unless, of course, they’re trying to rob you blind for a bev. Fortunately, we’ve turned bargain hunting at Manchester bars into a sport at this point.
We might not boast the lowest ‘average’ pint cost in the UK, but we still have some bloody good places to keep drinking affordable.
London tops the charts (pretends to be shocked)
While some of you may have scratched your eyes at the supposed average pint prices here in the North West, it won’t surprise any of you to see that London leads the way when it came to the most expensive pint when it came to average cost in the UK.
To be honest, £5.44 doesn’t just sound cheap but virtually unheard of these days.
CGA has it that the average cost of a beer in the British capital is actually down 15p from its price last September, but as we all know, paying upwards of £7 for a pint down that end of the country is pretty much par for the course the closer you get to London.
Yet more reason you can be glad you live around here, eh? And in case you thought you were leaving this article with very little, think again…
Georgina Pellant -
13th April 2023 
