The Restaurant Guide for Wine Lovers
Quality Wines
Quality Wines is a Clerkenwell wine shop and dining room where a merchant's cellar is the reason to come and the kitchen cooks small plates to suit it. The wine programme achieves genuine mutual elevation through a deep, personal, low-intervention list sold at close to shelf price, with the by-the-glass range answering the menu's hardest plates and only the absence of a printed pairing and a crisp Sherry by the glass holding it back from the very top. It will most reward the curious drinker who wants a serious bottle at honest money and is happy to let a great list, and the people who buy it, lead the way.
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Mountain
London, London
Basque and Catalan wood-fire
Mountain is a Michelin-starred Soho wood-fire restaurant whose thirty-six-page cellar is one of the most celebrated in the country and reason enough to book on its own. The wine programme achieves rare mutual elevation — the hardest plates on the menu are exactly the ones the list answers most fluently, and a span from grower Champagne to dry Sherry and the Canary Islands rewards curiosity at every price. It will most reward the wine lover who comes to drink seriously and adventurously, and who trusts a great list, and a real sommelier team, to lead the way.
Read the assessmentBiBi
London, London
Modern Indian tasting menu
BiBi is one of London's most celebrated modern Indian restaurants, a Mayfair tasting-menu room whose several-hundred-bottle cellar is among the finest and most original wine programmes in the city. The wine achieves genuine mutual elevation — the list and its two pairing flights are built precisely to answer the chilli, the numbing spice and the long-braised richness of the cooking, with grower Champagne, aged Riesling and dry Sherry and sake by the glass to do it. It will most reward the wine lover who wants to see ambitious Indian food and a great cellar lift each other, and who is happy to put themselves in the sommelier's hands.
Read the assessmentTrivet
London, London
Modern fine dining
Trivet is a two-Michelin-star Bermondsey restaurant built by a chef and a Master Sommelier as equals, where the cellar is as much the point as the cooking. The wine programme achieves real mutual elevation through one of London's most original and complete lists — arranged by the history of wine, rare in the Caucasus and Anatolia, grand in classical France and Italy, and matched by a serious sake programme that answers plates wine cannot. It will most reward the curious drinker who wants the guidance of a great sommelier and a cellar deep enough to follow wherever the meal leads.
Read the assessmentLlewelyn's
London, London
Modern British and European, wine bar
Llewelyn's is a neighbourhood modern-British and European bistro and wine bar in Herne Hill, pairing a daily-changing seasonal menu with a serious, characterful cellar. The programme achieves genuine mutual elevation — real depth and rare maturity made accessible by a Coravin offer, a complete Sherry-to-Port spine and wide, curious buying — with the hardest plates answered by the glass, including the textbook Fino for cured fish. It will most reward the wine lover who wants to drink seriously and range across mature and rare bottles without leaving a neighbourhood table.
Read the assessmentSael
London, London
Modern British Great British Brasserie
Sael is a Great British Brasserie on St James's Market serving seasonal British produce from the raw bar, the pie oven and the embers at a premium central-London address. The wine programme is one of the city's most ambitious and most accessible big lists — global in reach, deeply committed to home-grown English wine, with a sake section and serving formats from the single-figure glass to the pint to fine-wine Coravin pours — and it flatters the British cooking rather than overshadowing it. It will most reward a wine lover who wants range and discovery with proper brasserie food and likes to drink widely by the glass.
Read the assessmentBrat
London, London
Basque-influenced wood-fire British
Brat is a Michelin-starred wood-fire restaurant in Shoreditch cooking Basque-influenced British food from wild fish and named British farms. The wine programme achieves genuine mutual elevation — a deep, personal, characterful list with exceptional grower Champagne, a complete Sherry and sweet-wine corner and a by-the-glass offer from single figures — that answers the kitchen's hardest plates as fluently as any list in the guide. It will most reward the wine lover who wants a serious, wide-ranging cellar at a wood-fire counter, and who will let a dry Sherry meet the cured fish.
Read the assessmentBrunswick House
London, London
Modern British, wood-fired, wine bar
Brunswick House is a wine-led restaurant at Vauxhall where wood-fired modern British cooking is built around one of the deepest and most characterful wine lists in London. The programme earns its standing on a deeply personal, producer-led cellar — natural and low-intervention growers, a Jura obsession, serious Burgundy and Rhone maturity and an unusually wide international reach, all kept genuinely accessible by keg wine and a broad by-the-glass offer — held off a perfect score only by a thin dessert-and-fortified corner and no Sherry for the hardest plates. It will most reward the curious wine lover who wants either an everyday glass or a mature rarity, and who enjoys a list with a real point of view.
Read the assessmentNoble Rot Lamb's Conduit Street
London, London
French and British bistro
Noble Rot on Lamb's Conduit Street is the original wine-led bistro of the Noble Rot stable, where a merchant-grade cellar is the reason to book and the kitchen cooks to suit it. The wine programme achieves genuine mutual elevation — the hardest plates on the menu are precisely the ones the list answers most fluently, and the Coravin and by-the-glass offers put serious and mature bottles within reach of a single pour. It will most reward the curious wine lover who wants to drink above their usual bottle budget for an evening and trusts a great list to lead the way.
Read the assessment