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The Restaurant Guide for Wine Lovers

The Clive Arms

67/100
  • Ludlow, Shropshire
  • Modern British gastropub
  • By the glass
  • ££
  • Beta
What's this?

These are confidence labels — how sure we are that what we publish still reflects the restaurant's current practice. They are not a judgement on the restaurant; the wine and cooking are scored separately, out of 100.

  • Beta — assessed and scored, but we are still confirming some details (such as the current wine list), so it is published with that caveat.
  • No label — a fully confirmed entry.
  • In development — not yet a review; it appears so you can see where coverage is coming.

Some restaurants change their menus often, and we cannot always keep pace. Even so, our review stands as a point-in-time assessment — it can help you decide whether to visit, and it sets out the principles of pairing wine here, which should serve you whatever is on the list when you go. If things have moved on, the Vinealto pairing app can give you up-to-date advice on the spot.

The Clive Arms is a modern British gastropub with rooms on the Oakly Park estate just outside Ludlow, cooking a seasonal menu of grills, fish and spiced plates. Its wine programme pairs a genuinely broad, plainly-annotated by-the-glass range with a merchant-selected step-up bottle tier and answers the menu's hardest plates competently, its one real gap being the total absence of dessert and fortified wine. It will suit the wine lover who values an easy, well-explained list and the freedom of three glass sizes over a deep cellar or a sweet-wine finish.

The full assessment — the wine programme, the pairings that lift a plate, and how the room reads for a wine lover — is for subscribers.

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More in Shropshire

83/100 Beta

GlouGlou

Shrewsbury, Shropshire

Natural wine bar, seasonal cicchetti and small plates

GlouGlou is a natural-wine bar and bottle shop in Shrewsbury, where a short menu of tinned British seafood, cheese, charcuterie and cicchetti is built to drink with a large, low-intervention list. The programme's strength is the depth and coherence of its organic and biodynamic buying, and the ease with which that list answers the two plates that trouble wine most — the vinegar-sharp oily fish and the tomato-and-mozzarella Caprese. It will most reward the curious drinker who wants to explore natural wine with knowledgeable people to guide them, and who is happy to be led somewhere unfamiliar.

  • By the glass
  • ££
Read the assessment
80/100 Beta

Old Downton Lodge

Ludlow, Shropshire

Modern British fine dining

Old Downton Lodge is a restaurant with rooms in the Shropshire hills where a refined, seasonal modern-British kitchen is matched to a serious, merchant-built cellar. The wine programme achieves real mutual elevation: the two hardest plates on the menu are the very ones the list answers most fluently, several of those answers poured by the glass, and the fortified and Sherry offer is a genuine strength. It will most reward the wine lover who wants old-world depth and a proper by-the-glass and Sherry selection to explore alongside a destination dinner.

  • By the glass
  • £££
Read the assessment
79/100 Beta

A Taste of Tanners

Shrewsbury, Shropshire

Spanish-inspired tapas and wine bar

A Taste of Tanners is the tapas-and-wine bar of a long-established Shropshire wine merchant, where Spanish-leaning small plates are sent out to drink with a merchant-grade list. The programme's strength is honest merchant pricing and an exceptional Sherry and fortified shelf poured by the small glass, which answers the menu's two hardest plates — the marinated anchovies and the powerful blue cheese — more fluently than most kitchens twice its size. It will most reward the wine lover who likes to drink adventurously by the glass without paying restaurant markups, and anyone who wants to learn Sherry at the source.

  • By the glass
  • ££
Read the assessment

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