Pub of the Season

The Trafford & Hulme Pub Of The Season for Summer 2015 is Pi, Shaw’s Road, Altrincham.

Pi opened in October 2012 as the third outlet for Chorlton based Pivo Inns. The original Pi on Manchester Road in Chorlton was Pub of The Season for Spring 2010 with Pi(Rose Lane) in the Liverpool suburb of Mosley Hill joining the family in 2011.

The Altrincham bar follows the same basic formula as its siblings – specialising in beer with a basic but hugely successful food menu based around the products of Bristol’s PieMinster. The concept of Pi was born out of owner Andy Ingham’s desire for a local bar that he would want to drink in – as nobody else was opening the kind of place he liked, he did it himself.

There are two handpumps on the bar, one selling permanent beer Tatton Blonde. The guest pump serves an ever changing range of guests with regularly featured breweries including RedWillow, Saltaire and Brightside. The cask ales are complemented by a wide range of distinctive draught beers – there are no national brands here – and a massive range of bottles from the “beer bible”. Essentially it’s a beer heaven.

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The Trafford & Hulme Pub Of The Season for Spring 2015 is The Sedge Lynn, Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Whilst possibly not having the trendy appeal of some of Chorlton’s other bars, the Sedge Lynn sits quietly on Manchester Road selling vast quantities of quality real ales day in day out. Its 12 handpumps will typically feature 8 different real ales alongside two traditional ciders and have seen it become one of JD Wetherspoon’s top selling real ale outlets, easily selling more real ale than most of it’s competition.

Current manager Kirstin Downham took over 18 months ago having moved from The Kingfisher in Poynton. Local readers may also remember her from Didsbury’s Milson Rhodes where she was the original manager in 2010. Since moving to Chorlton, Kirstin has continued the good work of her predecessor Leanne Kempthorne who boosted real ale sales at the pub with a more varied range and much improved quality, taking the pub into the Good Beer Guide in the process. In September last year, the pub was named the North West regional winner for Real Ale in Wetherspoons annual awards.

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Trafford & Hulme Camra Pub of the season for summer 2014 is The Old Market Tavern in Altrincham – better known as’ O.M.T.’ to most people.

John Glover with his wife Linda and family ‘took over the reigns’ in March, 2005 and quickly set about making the pub what we see today. However when they first entered the building it was in a mess having been closed for a period of time and certain ‘undesirables’ had broken in and the place had been vandalised with many items ‘gone missing’. Over the years the pub has been transformed into a thoroughly enjoyable place to participate drinking some fantastic beers.

2008 was the year that saw the OMT re-enter Camra’s Good Beer Guide and has been in every edition since. Also the same year saw it voted as Trafford & Hulme’s Camra Pub of the Year.

Although the OMT is owned by Punch Taverns, John has an excellent agreement with them which allows him to choose which beers he wants. Six beers are permanent – Caledonian Deuchars IPA, George Wright’s Drunken Duck & Northern Lights, Taylor’s Landlord, Phoenix Arizona and Facers DHB, with a futher five handpumps reserved for guest beers from far and wide.

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The Trafford & Hulme Branch Pub Of The Season for Spring 2014 is The Vine Inn, Manchester.

Situated on Kennedy Street, just off Princess Street near to the Town Hall, The Vine is one of the city’s oldest pubs sporting an impressive tiled frontage and stained glass windows. The pub is an excellent example of how a pub can offer a real sense of community built around it’s regulars despite being right in the heart of the city, yet still offers a warm welcome to the many visitors to our city who cross its threshold. Much of this is built around long time landlady Rachelle Stringer whose enthusiasm for life and people is infectious to both staff and customers.

Locals and visitors alike have long been able to sample excellent ales from the two handpumps crammed onto the bar of the small ground floor servery, with Timothy Taylor’s Landlord and Wychwood Hobgoblin having been the only permanent ales. However, December 2013 saw the biggest change at the pub since the original ground floor bar was expanded into the building next door in the 1970s. That expansion created the upstairs area and a cellar bar which in recent years has served as the pub’s restaurant and function area but late last year, the cellar bar was transformed into Malt & Cask – a pub within a pub.

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The Trafford & Hulme Branch Pub of the Season for Winter 2013/14 is The Wharf situated in the Castlefield area of Manchester.

The City Centre is fortunate in being able to boast a number of top quality real ale outlets with some notable ones located around the perimeter of Castlefield.

However, for a long time, a foray down into the actual Castlefield basin was a rather unrewarding experience for the cask ale drinker. Thankfully, that situation changed in July 2012 with the arrival of The Wharf. 

Huge credit should be given to owners, the Brunning & Price Group, for taking on a derelict and somewhat uninspiring building and turning it into a real feature of the area (the building was purpose built in 1998 to house the Jackson’s Wharf pub which closed in 2005).

The  Wharf consists of two floors, the top level is set up to provide a more formal dining experience whilst the ground floor, with its various little alcoves and cosy corners, offers the customer that “proper pub” feeling.

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