The Wyndham Arms in Salisbury, Wiltshire, is somewhere we’ve longed to go ever since seeing its bright yellow, Hopback Brewery branded frontage from a speeding car a few years ago. It’s where the brewery began, before moving to bigger premises. This weekend, we finally made it, and what a treat it was.
Four Hopback beers from casks, several in bottles in the fridge, plus a Guinness-baiting stout on the keg font, kept us there for most of the evening. There’s also a tasteful selection of German and Belgian bottles.
But the real pleasure was in the balance the management had struck between a normal, cosy pub serving the locals (lots of them were in) and something that geeks like us would go out of our way for. That’s canny business from which other landlords would do well to learn.
Having sussed us as geeks, the barman understood completely when we wanted a bottle of Entire Stout from the fridge and a half of the keg to compare. For the record, they were both much better than Guinness, but the bottled version seemed more bitter, emphasising chocolate, whereas the keg was more sour (in a nice way).
Tip: to really blend in, order a pint of Crop or Summer, rather than using the full names (Crop Circle and Summer Lightning). And Kronenbourg 1664 is simply “Numbers”‘.
10 replies on “A perfect pub in Salisbury”
Yay to the Wyndham Arms – one of my all time faves from my home town.
I think you’re going a bit far calling it a perfect pub (surely the beer would be free in that case?) but it is good.
I remember traipsing there on a pissing wet Saturday evening. We were just so glad to get out of the rain, the pub scarcely registered. We got pissed wet again on the way back too. My abiding memories of Salisbury are rainy ones.
We did visit the Hopback brewery too where the sampling was generous.
I just love the idea of ordering a pint of Summer. We could do with a few gallons of the stuff round these parts.
Yes the Wyndham is a superb pub – shame it’s so far away from the station though.
It was our last port of call on a crawl a few months back before running off for our train. We took advantage of the takeaway containers they sell to continue enjoying the Summer on the way back to London.
Did you see Phil Harding from Time Team there? He lives nearby and it’s his favourite pub apparently.
Always have Entire on cask at their pub in Colliers Wood/Wimbledon, it’s very nice indeed. Reminded me of a doctor’s surgery did the Wyndham
I bought our house in Salisbury 9 years ago based on the fact it was within a 10 min walk of the Wyndham. My wife still doesn’t know that, but my fellow locals keep threatening to tell her.
Best pub serving the best beer in the world.
Neoman — thanks for dropping by. We are envious.
I seem to remember Phil Harding is (or was) a shareholder in Hop Back; he did the official opening of their other Salisbury pub — the Duck — several years ago. The Wyndham’s great, a favourite.
[…] was more Hopdaemon on tap and in bottles. A pint of Golden braid was OK and not unlike one of the lesser beers from Hopback. Green Daemon Helles was like one of our homebrews (so, nice enough, but with rough edges). Their […]