The Restaurant Guide for Wine Lovers
The Old Butchers
The Old Butchers is a long-standing Cotswolds seafood and charcoal-grill restaurant with a cellar far more serious than its village setting suggests. The wine programme earns its standing on classic, well-bought Bordeaux and Burgundy, Champagne by the glass and an unusually generous three-size by-the-glass offer that serves both the raw seafood and the charcoal grill, held back only by thin dessert and fortified choices and a list that leaves the pairing to the diner. It will most reward the diner who drinks a high-acid white with the seafood and a claret with the grill, and who treats the floor team as the guide to a genuinely good cellar.
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Purslane
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Seafood-led modern British
Purslane is a chef-led Cheltenham restaurant built on day-boat Cornish fish and a bi-monthly seasonal menu. Its compact, wide-ranging list is shaped around that cooking — strongest in the high-acid, unoaked and sparkling whites the fish asks for, and complete right through to a proper sweet and fortified finish. It will most reward a diner who loves precise seafood and white wine and is happy to be steered towards the freshest, most mineral corners of the list.
Read the assessmentSorrento Restaurant and Pizzeria
Stroud, Gloucestershire
Italian trattoria and pizzeria
Sorrento is a long-standing Italian trattoria and pizzeria in the centre of Stroud, cooking the full repertoire of antipasti, pizza, pasta and grills. Its wine programme is all-Italian and sensibly matched to the food — coherent by cuisine, honestly priced, helpfully annotated, and reaching from house pours by the glass to a genuine Barolo-and-Brunello top tier with a Champagne ladder above — but it stays with convention, offers no Sherry for its own oily-fish plates and no dedicated glass for the chilli, and closes on an unnamed dessert wine. It will most reward the diner who wants a well-priced Italian glass to go with a relaxed trattoria dinner, rather than the wine lover after a list to explore in depth.
Read the assessmentThe Corner House
Stroud, Gloucestershire
European bistro and sharing plates
The Corner House is a Mediterranean-leaning bistro in the centre of Stroud, cooking sharing platters, seafood and grills from a seasonally changing card. Its wine programme is short, commercial and genuinely accessible — Italian- and Mediterranean-led, honestly priced, broad by the glass across the everyday tier — but shallow above the house wines, with no Sherry for its own smoked-fish and artichoke plates and only a single dessert wine to close. It will most reward the diner who wants an easy, well-priced glass alongside a relaxed dinner, rather than the wine lover in search of a cellar to explore.
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