Malt is nestled into one of the railway arches in Maltby Street Market, on Maltby Street in Bermondsey. Priding themselves on being an all English bar, serving up the best quality wine and Craft Beers from England and the UK, and now recently stocking Folc as one of their new favourite wines (their words not ours!), we took a visit to catch up with owner Ian, and Manager Sonya, to learn more about Malt and how they are incorporating Folc into their menu.
How would you describe Malt?
We are a craft cocktail, English beer and all English wine bar. We do everything English if we can, and definitely everything from the UK. We are trying to harness the beauty of England and everything that the UK is producing.
Can you tell us a bit about how Malt came to be?
After the pandemic, one of the arches became free and Ian turned it into a bar. We sell English wines because as we progressed with Brexit and after the pandemic, we realised there were quite a lot of challenges with some of the other arches down here selling wines from Europe. Not only that, but Maltby Street Market is well known for worldwide food. We’ve got empanadas, Japanese, we’ve got Vietnamese. And then as I mentioned, in the Rope Walk Arches adjacent are a mixture of people selling French, South African, Spanish wines. But we decided to go with the UK, and of course then we started to develop our wine section, and now Maltby Street Market has somewhere to come and sample UK wines and Folc is right up there at the top!
How have you incorporated Folc into your menu?
We’re excited to have Folc available by the bottle or glass, and we have also incorporated Folc into our menu via a Paloma Blush cocktail. It’s named Paloma Blush because it has a little bit of grapefruit and rhubarb grown in the garden, and the addition of Folc makes a beautiful dry tart take on the Paloma.
Why a Paloma?
A Paloma is just a beautiful refreshing springtime cocktail anyway, and I love grapefruit and I wanted to make use of the locally grown rhubarb that we have in the grocer next door.
What’s the recipe?
50 ml English Cazcabel tequila 50ml
25ml Bristol Company grapefruit sherbet syrup
5ml Homemade Rhubarb shrub which is made with Redwine vinegar and rhubarb from the greengrocer next door cooked in sugar
50 ml Folc English rosé
Top with London Essence soda water
Garnish with wedge of grapefruit
What word would you use to sum up Folc?
The one word that sums up Folc for me is ‘joy’.