Lidl is opening an underground drink-in-the-dark wine bar in a Deansgate archway

Lidl is opening a pop-up wine bar in Manchester next month that will put the noir in Pinot Noir.

The budget supermarket will take over the arches beneath Barton Arcade for a weekend with a drink in the dark ‘Chateaux Noir’ experience.

It’s designed to focus your mind on the flavour and not the price.

Drinkers will pass through a ‘discombobulation chamber’ before entering into their ‘Cellar Noir’ for a 40-minute blind tasting session.

The first room will use garish, candy cane striped walls to project a false sense of scale. This should confuse your senses and throw you off the scent, so to speak. The second will be pitch black and come complete with waiters in night vision goggles.

Hosted by Lidl’s wine consultant MW Richard Bampfield, there’ll be eight wines to sample in total.

Then the experience will end in the festive Salle de Noel, complete with real Christmas trees, mince pies and a cheeseboard. And as this is Lidl, this will also function as a Christmas shop where you can buy the wines you tasted to take home.

Two of the Manchester sittings are already sold out but you can still book in at 9pm on Saturday 16th November or 1pm on 17th.

Tickets to the event cost just £4 plus an extra 90p booking fee, with all proceeds going to the NSPCC to help keep children in the UK safe.

Included in the £4 ticket price is entry to the event, eight 75ml taster glasses of wine and light nibbles.

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