As I predicted in my round up of Top Trends for 2008, wine bars - and wine-themed restaurants - are already proving huge this year. New York and London seemingly can’t get enough of them and they’re even booming in smaller (but admittedly not so small) towns like Montpellier. The latest edition of Terre et Vins, a really excellent wine magazine which covers the south of France, devotes a whole feature to them.

The most interesting opening so far to my mind though is Jonathan Downey’s The East Room, a wine bar and restaurant that will become a members club in a couple of months’ time. Not so much because of what it offers but the way Downey, a smart operator who owns the successful Match Bar group and Milk and Honey in London and New York, has gone about setting it up.

First of all, it’s based (with the exception of a couple of champagnes) entirely on new world wines - hence the name of the space The New World Wine Room. Secondly he’s recruited one of the most high profile sommeliers in the business, Matt Skinner, former sommelier at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, and TV pundit to draw up the list (and give the whole joint a celebrity cachet).

Thirdly, like most of the new wine enterprises, he’s embraced technology by installing the Enomatic wine dispensers that have proved so successful at The Sampler and Selfridges Wonder Bar. The way these machines operate , for those of you who are unfamiliar with them, is that you load up a card with credit and can then dispense the amount of wine you want whether it’s a taster or a full glass. As Downey puts it “It means I can just go in, help myself to a drink and sit down. No hanging about at the bar”

This is likely to appeal to the group Downey most wants to target - young professional women who he sees as key to shaping the image of his venue. As he puts it in his prospectus “We are catering to the 21st century tastes of 20 and 30 something women rather than the 19th century aesthetic of 50 and 60 something men”

To attract them he’s offering a lower membership joining fee and subscription and a light Antipodean menu that, as Downey puts it, ‘works hard for your wellbeing'.

"So expect low-calorie, low-fat, low-GI and low or no-carb choices using some of the best and healthiest seasonal ingredients we can possibly find, sourced as locally as we can get them. Sorry chaps, no bangers and no mash.”

This enterprise encapsulates all the trends in the on-trade at the moment - making wine less intimidating, less expensive and less exclusive and placing it in at the heart of a casual dining experience serving healthy, locally sourced food. Downey has cleverly seen that to grow the wine market you need to appeal to women but with a quality offering, not a condescending pink drink.

If you look at Napa’s new market complex The Oxbow,  which formally opens this weekend, you’ll experience a similar vibe. At the heart is the Oxbow Wine Merchant (an offshoot of San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant which offers all sorts of fascinating wine flights in its wine bar) and Folio Enoteca and Winery which will include a café and a micro-winery.

Top sommeliers are also choosing to work in a more casual environment. Thierry Thomasin, for example, moved from the Michelin-garlanded Le Gavroche and Aubergine in London to open an upmarket bistro Angelus while former sommelier of the world Enrico Bernardo who used to work at Le Cinq, has opened a revolutionary wine bar in Paris, Il Vino, where the menu is the wine and you order food to match.

The wine world is changing. And for the better . . .