5 minute read
Drink Bill Knott
monotony and reclaiming the palme d’or of yesteryear. If you want grandeur, head for Maison François in St James’s or Les 110 de Taillevent in Cavendish Square.
But if you’re done with the condescension of young French waiters, here are three to which I return regularly.
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In third place is Cépages, a happy, openbricked wine bistro in Notting Hill. Feast on duck rillettes and saucisson while trying lots of well-priced glasses, courtesy of Coravin.
Then comes Le Boudin Blanc, in Shepherd Market. Lots of classics (Goliath-proportioned escargots and filet de veau), and very well executed. My chef accomplice, Rowley Leigh, trained by the Roux brothers in the seventies, was in ecstasy. Even more so when he found they were offering Le Grand Village, made by M Guinaudeau who makes Château Lafleur, for £49. So taken were we with the waitress, Anouk Aimée’s double, that we lost control and ordered a bottle of La Pialade, ‘a snip at £120, given it’s £180 at Berry’s’. The chef doesn’t get out much.
Yet my favourite new restaurant is Les 2 Garçons in Crouch End. With just 24 covers, this is the most brilliant small restaurant in London and the first that genius Baby Boomer chef Robert Reid has actually owned, having worked at the Oak Room and Balthazar. He and J-C, the maître d’, are the entire staff.
This is truly a bistro de quartier: the best-ever French onion soup and beef Wellington. The pear tarte tatin will blow you away, as it did Pierre Koffman when he and The Oldie’s drinks critic, Bill Knott, went there. Virgil believed a taverna was blessed by three gods: ‘innocent’ Ceres, Bromius and Amor – and here, the greatest of the three is Amor.
DRINK BILL KNOTT SWEET TALK
You might suppose that the job of a wine writer offers a skeleton key to the world’s finest cellars, a never-ending ride on a gilded merry-go-round of grand cru tastings.
Sadly not, although – just occasionally – an invitation plops on the mat (or, more often, pings into the inbox) that does have a distinct whiff of luxury about it. Such was the summons to dinner with Sandrine Garbay, cellar-master of the fabled Château d’Yquem in Sauternes, about 30 miles south-east of Bordeaux.
Yquem is perhaps the most famous sweet wine in the world. It is also one of the most expensive: the great 2001 vintage, for example, will set you back around £300 for a half-bottle. In Yquem’s defence, however, you get a lot of grapes for your money.
Because only properly rotted grapes (Yquem’s ancient vineyards are especially susceptible to pourriture noble, noble rot, a fungus that shrivels grapes and concentrates their sugars) are used for each vintage, each glass of the resultant nectar is the product of an entire vine.
Thanks to the combination of intense fruit and high acidity, vintages of Yquem are incredibly long-lived – a century or more. Madame Garbay thinks that they are most expressive at around 15 years. Having tasted the 2007 with her over dinner, I agree. I stole one final glug just before leaving and I could still taste its amazingly rich melange of marmalade, saffron and barley sugar half an hour later.
Marketing man Mathieu Jullien, who was also at dinner, thinks ‘dessert wine’ is too restrictive, preferring to call it ‘sweet wine’. Certainly, Sauternes classically pairs very happily with Roquefort or foie gras. The menu eschewed both, but we were served the 2017 with roast chicken, and jolly nice it was, too, although perhaps not quite giving Montrachet a run for its (considerable) money.
I might not taste Yquem again for years, but I do love sweet wines. Latepicked German Riesling and Hungarian Tokaji are particular favourites, the top examples rivalling Sauternes in both complexity and price.
There are many sweet wines that won’t break the bank. At around a fiver a bottle, Moscatel de Valencia – available from most supermarkets – is cheap enough to poach pears in, as well as good to drink.
I have fond memories, too, of drinking the local Muscat during a splendid lunch at L’Auberge de L’École, an old schoolhouse in the tiny village of Saint-Jean-de-Minervois, and of sampling honeyed, floral Muscat in the dizzyingly steep vineyards on Samos.
Waitrose’s Samos Vin Doux is a steal at £8.99. And the similarly well-priced sweet wines from Saussignac and Monbazillac went down very well on an Oldie trip to the Dordogne a few years ago.
There are fine sweet wines to be had from the New World, too. Look out for Quady Wines from California; Klein Constantia’s Vin de Constance from South Africa; and numerous examples from Australia – Brown Brothers Late Harvest Orange Muscat & Flora is widely available and delicious. The Aussies, too, in their inimitably down-to-earth fashion, have devised their own solution to the problem of what to call dessert wines, pudding wines and sweet wines.
They are all known, simply and accurately, as ‘stickies’.
This month’s Oldie wine offer, in conjunction with DBM Wines, is a 12-bottle case comprising four bottles each of a classic white from the south of France to drink as an aperitif or with seafood; a meaty, great-value claret from old vines; and a Malbec from Argentina that would perfectly partner a plate of roast beef. Or you can buy cases of each individual wine.
Wine
Picpoul de Pinet ‘Ornezon’, Vignerons de Florensac, Côteaux de Languedoc 2020, offer price £9.99, case price £119.88
Crisp, lively white with a touch more body and length than the average Picpoul.
Château Floréal Laguens, Bordeaux Supérieur 2018, offer price £12.50, case price £150.00
Once known as Château Lafitte, and much better value than its nearnamesake: classic, complex claret.
Aguaribay Malbec, Valle de Uco, Argentina 2019, offer price £11.99, case price £143.88
Silky tannins and plenty of fruit: drinking well now, and will keep for at least a couple of years.
