Mimi Avery Wine

02/03/2026

Another day in this little treasure trove of a wine shop in , I will be there tomorrow, Tuesday (3rd Feb) 10-4. Last week I had a couple of visits from locals just wanting to meet, and introduce themselves, they did come back and purchase when Andy returned 🍷🤩

I really am loving being back on the shop floor, and learning all the wines that he has on the shelves. Although I have to stop buying them - the Semillon ‘24 went down a storm at last weeks tasting in Aston Clinton.

24/02/2026

Love love love little french

The restaurant was looking pretty today in the sunshine ( yes sunshine ☀️ !) so we thought we’d share it
As we’ve picked up quite a few followers of late we thought we’d tell you a bit about us - especially for those who may not have tried us yet. We’re based in Bristol, specifically Westbury Park & we’re on North View ( just off the Downs) by Whitetree roundabout. We’re a small independent, family run French restaurant led by our chef owner . We’ve been around for 6 1/2 years and we absolutely love what we do - which is simple French food done really well. Our wine list is also Freddy’s brain child and it is, we suspect, the raison d’être for everything he does . That and his uncompromising love of hospitality. If you’re with us on this stream, or if you’ve been to us already, thanks for being here. None of it happens without you
We’re open 7 days a week for lunch & dinner, except Sundays when we do an extended lunch service
See link in our bio for bookings

23/02/2026

The ups and downs of a week in my life, must put it all in my diary now!

🛒 on Tuesday and Thursday I was back in my favourite role in wine… shop assisting. The Grape The Good in Wells such fun, even had customers coming in to say hello “not shopping today, just wanted to meet you” and “are you ‘an’ Avery” 🤩

👑Wednesday I had a Royal engagement. Queen Camilla came to visit the Vintners, she is an honorary member, and both her father Bruce Shand and grand father P Morton Shand were in the Wine Trade. Had I known the contents of her speech I would have reminisced about growing up in the wine trade with her. But instead we had a lovely chat about her Brother’s Elephant Tara (which my sister had just visited in India)

🍷Friday was back in the swing of Events, the Aston Wine Club, for a tour of Australia. Tyrrell’s Wines semillon went down a storm, and there was debate in the reds but the Laithwaites Wine premium Durif pipped the Freycinet Vineyards 2000 and d’Arenberg Shiraz to the red post.

🏉🏟️ Saturday was a bitter sweet trip to , the Princess of Wales was the Royal present, to witness a poor show from England. I do love live rugby, but would definitely have preferred a win or at least closer result…

Here is the video of the visit.

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxVtOorArAet-3ruTAw7DbXvgRfLe688Ri

16/02/2026

So all, I am dipping my toes back into retail… keeping it real and missing chats with customers - so if anyone is in or near Wells on Tuesday or Thursday this week between 10 and 4 - I’ll be manning the shop, The Grape & The Good 29 Broad Street. Whilst Andrew takes a little busman’s holiday to Oporto.

09/02/2026

The quirky, random, “Mimi smiley selfies” tour continues. With thanks this week to (for those who didn’t know) .wine was part of this group when I started working for them 27 years ago, our mail order and shop arm later went into the fold. But I always remember “our” agency portfolio, looks like they did too… 23 years later and there is Roberto jnr , and the lovely Ibbotsons of and many more.

The next day I went via .uk’s inaugural tasting (just for the Rieslings…) where I tasted the range - dry rieslings that have the flavour profile of their sweeter pradikat cousins that my grandfather taught me to love (and yes he died when I was 7…)

However just a table away was my wine of the tasting polish from I am going to get my hands on some of that!

Also note recent cellar discovery of 1969 Piesporter Goldtropfchen spatlese, laid down for me - low level meant it wasn’t shining but it had an aura about it (will try a better fill level next time).

I was on my way to the Court lunch at where I shared a bottle of ‘Canary’ (our vintner’s song has a line “one isle of Canary’s worth all of Peru” that Dad (a past Master) had squirrelled away (delicious 42 hrs after decanting) - educated guesses said early C20 - the label was almost non-existent but it was a exhibition bottling, with a ’s added label.

I have now just returned from a fantastically fun weekend for a 50th in (was supposed to be Berlin - black ice on the runway 🥶) great friends, 90’s day time disco and look up Fraser of for a great tour guide.

Off to London again tomorrow to help host Warrent Officers back at

31/01/2026

Such great courses - I’ve done 2 different ones - so interesting to find out the different flavours and what the cacao percentages actually do/don’t mean flavour wise. 🤔

26/01/2026

Continuing on my research for future tastings I had a lovely visit to the impressive on a blustery day (just before storm Ingrid arrived) and their wood burner was roaring. Theirs is a fantastic venue and delicious wines. Very small world with connections to the WESCA for whom one tasting is.
Then, after lunch in Bath with my Godmother at 15 great pultney street - how many white bait in a portion!!! Yum. I headed off to , a very different, petite, venue, who produce a small volume of white wine, on a sunny day this is beautiful, south facing deck overlooking the vineyard.
I held an intro to wine tasting for a small group in Wells, one of two Birthdays this weekend - the other was Mother’s unmentionably big Birthday - love how the has not changed!
I have been working on an English wine and it’s comparable European cousins tasting for a bristol (charitably focussed) dining club, and an Australia tasting for Aston wine society.
Finally… the brilliant rowing pair that is raising money for The north arrived in the Caribbean .toughest.row. They were the First Ladies team in, and beat the record for the ladies pair by 6 days!!! They are still raising monies
https://www.givewheel.com/fundraising/6124/atlantic-highway-crowdfunding/

19/01/2026

So here is last week in a nutshell… I took myself back to London to pay my first visit to Carpenters hall (look at all that woodwork) for (thanks ) tasting, 2024 a tiny, but beautifully bright vintage. Then following up on two enquiries into variations on tasting local English wines so I have had initial chats with at and founts of knowledge and really enthusiastic with some great ideas across the board. There were a couple of glorious days in my office come greenhouse. I bumped into at his new office aka , long time no see. The weekend saw me finish the amazing jigsaw, and chop all (well half) of the wood that I’d sawn. Love working outdoors in the sunshine 🌞

16/01/2026

To post the same in linked in and insta or not…
Being relatively new to this self promotion malarkey you can have last weeks “week in the life of Mimi Avery” now - and I’ll post this weeks on the weekend…

The new year started with a bang! I was asked to be a presenter on a set of training videos on the basics of all things wine for the at with I loved one piece of feed back “special mention to Mimi for her one take, 8 min discourse on how to open a bottle of bubbles, which will require zero editing”

The next day was the unmissable annual trade lunch at only got a photo of the but a good time had by all and £14,000 for the charity :-) and all the other attendees

The weekend involved finishing off our huge Beech tree that had fallen into the neighbouring farmers field, as my saw now had a new spark plug! Thanks to and to for doing the hard bit making it safe for me to work on.

29/12/2025

That was the Christmas that was :-) website running smoothly, events went well - more in the pipeline… one booked for next December already! Messiah - not been to for Years, in aid of the managed to get Mum next to me last minute - right up front. Gloriously quiet Christmas Day. Riotous Dad’s birthday starting with over 130 tractors in the Parade in aid of . And had time to finish my birthday present jigsaw and still 2 days to New Year. Now to get my chainsaw fixed - again…

23/12/2025

It’s , so out came the birthday present jigsaw brilliant fun whilst supper is cooking. Reminiscing about our road trip around France in the Summer.

20/12/2025

So I was introduced to a couple of years ago - and if I wanted a party bubble at a great price this was it… (£8.99 now). But I saw in the shop last week their at £9.99 (now only if you have a Lidl card, max 6 bottles) so last night we did the taste test. The cremant was still delicious, but the champagne… a lovely richer colour, more delicate mouse, aromas of apple with a touch of brioche - much more complex was my partner’s comment. So that is this Christmas sorted for us, at least, have a good one.