This venue has closed.
Kind of like a hipper, younger
Dr Wine, but roomier. Like its older, perennially popular Fumin Lu counterpart, UVA is handsome, with easy, down-cast lighting and some smart, well-appointed decor. Though it occasionally drifts towards cliche for an Italian-owned bar – a retro
La Dolce Vita poster, for example – overall it’s a success.
The trend for bare-filament bulbs lives on, there’s salvaged wood floors, slumpy black-leather chairs, a number of tucked-away nooks, some natty copper lamps and one of those high-set, look-at-me bars that tantalisingly places you at eye-view with your co-drinkers (think, again, downstairs at Dr Wine). In fact, there’s enough ready charisma and date-night allure here to tempt us to think that UVA will succeed as a destination bar in spite of its menu and location.
The owners Piercarlo Panozzo and Ivan Acardi are two Italian oenophile Shanghai upstarts, the latter with wine-producing parents back home in Piemonte. Natually, then, the bias here is for Italian wines. The menu is fairly short, and not the dizzying prospect you find elsewhere, with ten wines by the glass (from 35RMB) and a commendable selection of bottles for around the 210RMB mark.
We invited Piercarlo to draw us towards ‘something interesting’ and he impressed with a dry, slightly tart Medici Ermete Lambrusco (40RMB/glass; 210RMB/bottle) which had much more depth, composure and complexity than we’d anticipated (it’s a Lambrusco after all). Also memorable, with a pleasingly boozy profile, was a glass of Velenosi Piceno rosso (37RMB/glass). Concessions are made for beer drinkers with Red Star (45RMB) and Estrella (40RMB).
Food, as is often the case at wine bars, doesn’t quite live up to the vino. It’s not bad, though: for the price, a mushroom and brie pizza (47RMB) was much bigger and satisfying than expected. There are three pastas, including a passable
amatriciana (50RMB), with bacon, onion, Pecorino cheese and tomato.
