Our Night of Drinking At the ‘Game of Thrones’ Pop-Up Pub

If there’s one lesson to be drawn from six seasons of Game of Thrones it’s you drink or you die. The fall and subsequent rise of Cersei Lannister to sneery supremacy has been achieved with one hand never far from a goblet of red wine. She’s the half-cut queen, her prodigious intake matched only by her detested brother Tyrion. He too has been knocking it back with abandon from the very first scene in which we met him. He styles himself as “the god of tits and wine.” And note how Tyrion is also still standing, this in a show that happily sees off major characters like most of us see off a tequila shot.

Related: ‘Game of Thrones’: Cersei and Wine: A Love Story

There’s so much boozing in Game of Thrones, in fact, that the only surprise is it’s taken seven years for a Game of Thrones themed bar to pop up. Walk in to Blood & Wine, a pop-up in a basement in Edinburgh’s New Town, and it feels like its been there since the Mad King was murdered. The craggy sandstone walls and bare brickwork, the rough-sawn timber, flickering candlelight, pelts and House Lannister banners are everything you’d hope for in a cosy King’s Landing tavern. Plates of “Frey pies” and “Sansa’s Lemon Cakes” (she loves them — it says so in A Game of Thrones) sit on the bar by bottles of mead. You can just see where they’ve painted over the sign saying toilets and replaced it with “Chamberpots.”

The good news is that Blood & Wine is one for fans by fans. Anyone could dress serving wenches in rags and decant a Bud light in to a cow-horn mug, but the people behind Blood & Wine have scaled the Wall and gone miles beyond in their bid to capture the authentic Thronian vibe. First up, there are screens showing episodes, as you’d expect, but they’re good episodes, well chosen. Great to see the battle of the Blackwater again, and not just the fight scenes but those counterpoint cutaways with Cersei locked in a crypt with Sansa (drinking, inevitably). Seconds later there’s the Hound spawning a thousand t-shirts with his unforgettable “F**k the water, bring me wine.” And who are we to argue with The Hound? Off to the bar.

Blood & Wine began life in the inauspicious surrounds of Norwich in Norfolk, better known as the home of Alan Partridge. Then it was just a wine-tasting session, and the wine flight remains the backbone of the drinks menu. For £10 (about $12) you get six glasses, which is a bargain in itself. The place setting is a map of the Seven Kingdoms that shows you where the wines hail from, and it’s all accompanied with tasting notes delivered in an envelope with a wax seal of the Hand of the King.

Each of the wines links in to a passage from the books or TV series. (Sample: “There lies our summer arbor. The grapes are small and tart, but make a most drinkable wine.” — Brother Narbert in A Feast for Crows) and together they show that the people running the bar have read the books and read them well. Equally, as the whole thing is (spoiler alert) fictional there’s also fun to be had working out that the delectable tipple from Lys in Essos is actually a well-oaked Aussie chardonnay.

Related: ‘Game of Thrones’ Star Bella Ramsey on the Moment Lyanna Mormont Became a Fan Favorite

The drinks menu stretches from Mead and Ale to Infusions (cocktails) including Black Tar Rum (drunk by Quentyn Martell “to sweet oblivion”) and Andalish Sours. I opted to clear the palette with a shot of “Mountain Vodka.” It was short, smooth and wholly delectable, the only question being what it had to do with the 6’ 7” Gregor Clegane — aka The Mountain, the guy who likes to crush faces for his sport. Then I found out that the man who plays The Mountain, the gargantuan plane-lifting brickhouse Hafthor Julius Bjornsson, also has his own brand of Icelandic Vodka, and this was it. Maybe if you drink more of it your own eyeballs pop out. (I didn’t try.)

Part of the problem with anything so-called immersive — theatre, cinema, baby showers — is that it can quite easily become just plain naff. It’s hard to say where loving homage ends and terminal wackiness begins, but you know it when you see it. I would commend Blood & Wine, therefore, for its restraint. There were no actors, roleplays or dress codes to spoil your evening. This may have something to do with fear of HBO’s lawyers — there are disclaimers everywhere noting that the bar is not an official endeavor — but either way it makes Blood & Wine a bar you could enjoy even if you had no idea why there were pictures of an Imp with a scar all over the place.

Regrets? Just two. Firstly I’d say they missed a trick by not installing Iron Thrones in the restrooms (possibly with a special Tywin Lannister tribute dummy-of-doom). And secondly, Blood & Wine won’t be around for much longer. The bar is a pop-up, initially due to run until January but subsequently extended twice (what do we say to the God of Death? Not today!). It now runs through the end of March.

Based on the crowds and the happy punters, some posing with a replica Widow’s Wail, others just supping on a mug of mead, I’d say it deserves another season. The current run finishes end March, but there are plans for it to resurface when the next season of the show returns this summer. Meanwhile Rachel and Lindon, the couple who run the place and call themselves the Pop Up Geeks, are working on new projects, all in the name of helping you get sloshed on your favorite show. A Walking Dead night is in the works, as is some kind of Stranger Things tribute. But they’re open to suggestions — why not let us know fictional universe you’d like to drink in next? Take our poll below!

Game of Thrones Season 7 will premiere on HBO this summer.

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