O Wine Angels — Restaurant in Lyon

I went there with my friend (whose review is also available), and between the two of us we got three bottles. Unfortunately, none of them were anywhere near drinkable, with high levels of acidity (red wine vinegar levels!) and in one case a clear sparkling taste to the red wine.

I reached out to the owner, who (to his credit) responded about a week later and was sorry for the situation. He said that it was hard to comment, since he couldn't taste the bottles himself. This is fair. But we were unfortunately on vacation, not locals.

What was not fair in the owner's response on the other hand was that these are natural wines, and the most likely explanation is that we are not used to this type of wines. I am experienced with natural wines, and these did not taste like anything I've tried before. They simply tasted off, acidic. The closest I can remember is a Pinot noir from Alsace that had been aged 20 years and turned into vinegar.

The owner also wondered why we chose these bottles specifically, without asking the person at the store. I am not sure what that would have changed, since according to him, there was nothing wrong with the bottles.

In other words, I am hoping that our experience does not reflect the quality of the wine in the store, and that we got simply terribly unlucky. However, beware - these natural wines may taste like vinegar. Or so you will be told if it ever...

As someone that strongly believes in supporting small, independent wine retailers, I was incredibly disappointed in my experience at this store.

Like other reviewers, both of the bottles of red wine we purchased (over €40) - both of which were recommended by the owner/staff member - were noticeably and unpleasantly fizzy even after decanting for hours. Rather than leave a negative review as a first resort, I wanted to provide this feedback to store. When I returned to the store to let him know, he was incredibly rude - his opinion was that if he assessed the customer was familiar with natural wines, he didn't need to tell them that the red wine could be fizzy. I told him that I had had several natural wines before, none of which were fizzy. He even went so far as to raise his voice at me in front of other customers at the store.

I wouldn't purchase from this store again as I see other customers have had the same experience with the wines and with the service.

For those who have purchased fizzy wine at this store: as per advice I've received elsewhere, the recommendation is to decant, then cover with bottle with one hand and shake 4-5 times to let the carbonation dissipate. Whether you are happy to drink wine like this - that's...

My friend and I went here last week and bought three bottles of wine between us. All different wines from different regions. When we got home we were dismayed to find that the first bottle we opened was corked, but that happens sometimes and is just a part of drinking wine. So then we opened the second and found that this bottle was also corked. Crazy coincidence. So then we opened the third bottle and that one too was corked. And these weren't just a little off, one was almost fizzy from the secondary fermentation and all three absolutely undrinkable. We thought it might be us, like we had eaten something that would affect our palette, but then we went back to a bottle of St. Joseph that we had from the day before and it tasted perfectly fine. My theory is that this store got too warm this summer with the hot weather and that many of their bottles have been affected. My friend, who is a native French speaker, tried to reach out to the store owner by email but we never...