Six years ago, there was nowhere to drink local wine in Baku. Azerbaijani wine was gathering dust on the shelves and seemed to be of no interest to anyone, even the winemakers themselves. So we opened a bar for our friends and ourselves. We love wine and we wanted Azerbaijanis to drink and rediscover their own wine as well.
What does it take? A good location (just next to the main pedestrian street in the city), a light contemporary design – an audacious and funky interior, friendly staff and reasonable prices, and we don’t try to save on the way we serve wine. From the very first day we serve it in proper glasses made from thin glass and we use decanters and coolers when necessary.
We are now the place for locals and that’s what a smart tourist likes. We’re very glad to start this new wave – restaurateurs and winemakers feel revitalized now and people in Baku have learned to drink wine very fast, and they do it so beautifully. I love discovering inexpensive wine that exceeds my expectations. I want to share this experience with our bar’s guests and friends immediately. We’ve just introduced a fresh approach at Kefli: the main goal now is to let people taste wines they would never have thought to try before. Each week we’re going to serve something new, by the glass.
Kefli has the widest range of local wines in the city, including organic, pomegranate and even non-alcoholic ones, and of course above all we pay attention to indigenous Azerbaijani grape varieties. Usually tourists are too short of time to visit the wineries in different regions, so we are kind of a museum for them, a museum where you can taste different parts of the country.
