Few documents offer a better, more acute insight into the lives and means of the very rich than a top-end wine list. The hefty tome that is perhaps the world’s most extraordinary example of this, from Vienna’s five-star hotel Palais Coburg, sprawls across some 100 tightly spaced pages, with many prices running to the high three figures, and many more advertised with one of two pithy German euphemisms for “you almost certainly cannot afford this”: preis vor ort and raritat.
As out-of-this-world decadent as this kind of list undoubtedly is, I do understand the once in a lifetime appeal that leads some well-heeled wine lovers to save up for a night at the Palais Coburg or other blockbusting wine-led restaurants around the world, such as New York City’s Eleven Madison Park or London’s Sketch. Increasingly, however, you don’t have to be a plutocrat – or even, for one night only, pretend to be a plutocrat – to enjoy some of the best restaurant wines around.
OK, I’m not talking about the exceedingly rare and expensive likes of 1929 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti or 1893 Château d’Yquem on offer at the Palais Coburg. Those will always be out of reach to most of us. All the same, over the past couple of years, it’s become much easier to find, buy and drink at home the sort of bottles that only ever used to turn up on the best wine lists – and at prices that are a fraction of those you’d find if you were nervously turning the pages of the leather-bound book at a restaurant table.
It’s a trend that has been accelerated by the pandemic, a period when the prolonged closure of their main source of custom forced many restaurant wine suppliers to look at other ways of shifting their wares. One was to focus on selling more to independent wine merchants, the sort of upmarket shops where restaurateurs are comfortable seeing their wines, or at least happier than they would be if they saw them in a supermarket.
Another option was to become a retailer, cutting out the indisposed middleman, and selling directly to the general public. Many of these ad-hoc online businesses didn’t last beyond the first lockdown but others have endured. With insolvencies in the restaurant sector up by 60% in the past year according to accountancy firm UHY Hacker, the appeal of this new stream of income for wine suppliers is obvious.
It’s obvious for punters like me, too. There is nothing quite like the experience of coming across a new, interesting or just straightforwardly delicious wine at a restaurant with similarly stimulating food and company. But, at an inflationary time when our lives seem to be all about ways of making more of our increasingly slender means, the at-home service provided by restaurant suppliers such as Jascots at Home, Indigo Wine spin-off the Sourcing Table or the Modest Merchant, among others, is very much the next best thing.
Six restaurant wines to drink at home
Metic Cabernet Sauvignon
Colchagua Valley, Chile 2019 (from £10.20, thesourcingtable.com; lescaves.co.uk; hopburnsblack.co.uk)
A considerable cut above house-wine level, this brilliant Chilean cabernet sauvignon imported by one of the UK’s biggest restaurant wine suppliers, the natural wine-minded Les Caves de Pyrene, is an effortless squeeze of ripe blackcurrant succulence.
Tiefenbrunner Merus Vernatsch Schiava
Alto-Adige, Italy 2021 (£15.66, jascots.co.uk)
Restaurant supplier Jascots asks for a £20 fee, all of which goes to hospitality sector charity Hospitality Action, before you can order from them. It’s worth it for wines such as this gossamer light and refreshing alpine Italian red, just the best match for salami antipasti.
Bruno Murciano L’Alegria
Utiel-Requena, Spain 2019 (from £12.63, spanishwinesdirect.co.uk; h2vin.co.uk; perfectcellar.com)
A former head sommelier at the Ritz, Bruno Murciano knows what works in a restaurant, and this red, made from the bobal variety in Murciano’s own vineyard back home near Valencia, is a beautiful soft-fleshed, red-berried example of light-touch modern Spanish winemaking.
Savage Wines Salt River Sauvignon Blanc
Stellenbosch, South Africa 2021 (£17.50, swig.co.uk)
The team at Swig has always balanced its restaurant-supply business with a healthy sideline in direct-to-consumer sales. The range is superb, with South Africa a particular strength, and well represented by this gastronomically rich yet racy dry white.
Ebner-Ebenauer Grüner Veltliner
Weinviertel, Austria 2020 (£17, robersonwine.com)
You won’t find many other wines at this sort of UK retail price on the list at Palais Coburg, but this scintillating green apple and fennel-scented dry white, made from the signature Austrian white grape grüner veltliner, can be enjoyed at the Viennese institution for a very reasonable €35.
Langlois Château Classic Brut Crémant de Loire
Loire, France NV (from £13.99, adnams.co.uk; majestic.co.uk)
Something of a staple in the UK’s (and, for that matter, the Loire’s) classic French restaurant scene, Langlois Château’s superb value, bottle-fermented sparkling wines are easily available for drinking at home or BYOB. This chenin-based cuvee is ripely stone-fruited, finely fizzy and crisp.